


The Trials and Tribulations of Trying to Ask Your Crush Out: or how Steve and Tony finally got together

by yuniesan



Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon), Marvel 3490, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 4 + 1 fic, Captain America/Iron man Big Bang 2020, Crack Fic, F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Humor, M/M, Multi, Multiverse Shenanigans, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Superfamily (Marvel), Team ECHO, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, fanart by ironycap, the crossover no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27542242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuniesan/pseuds/yuniesan
Summary: It's been two years since the Battle for Earth, two years since Thanos. Tony and Steve survived that fight and everything afterwards, but now they must survive just trying to ask each other out. Especially when they keep getting interrupted during their almost moments together.Or, how Steve and Tony got together, featuring a t-shirt that annoys Tony, a meeting with their multiverse selves, one of which is a girl which surprised the hell out of Tony, their meddling exes, their relationship as viewed by the tabloids, constant interruptions from Doctor Doom, an A.I. who is just trying her best, whether Morgan approves, and a very drunken trip to Vegas with Thor's secret mead stash.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55
Collections: 2020 Captain America/Iron Man Big Bang





	1. Multiverse

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for Cap-IronMan Big Bang 2020
> 
> I wanted to write fluff, pining, and just these two being cute because 2020 sucks and we need something to be happy about!! This story only started because of a t-shirt I brought for me and my best friend, that of course said tall best friend and short best friend.
> 
> I would love to thank ironycap for their lovely artwork, https://archiveofourown.org/works/27541063, honestly I'm a little too obsessed with the bathtub and they know it.

It started with a t-shirt that Natasha had gotten for Steve and Bucky saying Tall Best friend and short best friend, wait let's go back because actually it started when that idiot Reed Richards opened up a portal into another reality and accidentally pulled out another version of Tony Stark and Tony realized that this guy was on the same level as Steve, who Tony had been pining over and had just gotten enough courage to ask him out. He wasn’t a teenager you know, even though this was a very teenage thing to do, but come on its Captain freaking America, how would you go about asking the guy out. Anyway, because of Richards’ stupidity, this other version of Tony had shown up on the day he had hoped would be the first date with Steve, and with him came some crazy villain that had a vendetta against stupid Reed Richards.

* * *

“Honestly, I don’t know what to do,” Tony said as he stared at the experiment running  at the moment . “I mean he looks like me and has everything I have, except the you know,” he gestured towards the metal arm and the scars on his face, the remnants of wielding an almighty force, “And of course the guy is flirting with Steve, how am I supposed to compete with that especially since I can’t even look at Steve without bumbling my way through even asking him one question.”

“Tony, I don’t have time for this right now,” Bruce said, still looking like Professor Hulk, as Tony has started calling him. “Go find a someone to talk to, a therapist, a physiatrist, or a psychologist, anyone to talk to about whatever’s happening now.”

“Fine,” he grumbled and walked out of the room. “You’re no fun now that you look like that.”

“That’s a lie because I know you love me,” Bruce called out as Tony walked out of the lab.

It was a lie, Tony still cared for his science bro, he was just a little irritable, but then again it feels like he should start the story from the absolute beginning, and he needed someone who was going to give him an opinion that wouldn’t be bias towards that other Tony Stark, hell they even had the same freaking name and everything, did his parent in that other universe not have any imagination. The guy looked younger than him too so honestly, he wasn’t sure if they were even close to the same age.

“Daddy,” the voice of his beautiful little girl rang through the room and Tony saw the smile on her face. “There was this guy in the kitchen with Uncle Steve, and he looked just like you, but he didn't have your Iron Man arm, and... and... and then... and then I asked Peter where you were and he said that you were with Uncle Bruce so I went looking for you to tell you that there was a guy in the kitchen that looked like you.”

“You can breathe between words you know,” he said picking up his little girl up  off of the ground. “Where’s your momma?”

“Mommy went to the office, she said that it’s Daddy’s turn to take care of me this weekend and that I have to be good and not take anything out of the workshop and not to go to the workshop, but then  I told her that DUM-E would miss me too much if I did that,” she was smiling at him, her eyes shining, and all he could think was about how he had gotten so lucky.

“Let’s go my little  Maguna ,” he said smiling walking them away from the laughs that were coming from the common area of the newly remodeled Avengers Tower. Whatever made him think that selling the tower was a good idea, well that part of him was an idiot, he  was allowed to say that about himself. Honestly, he had missed the days when the Avengers were sitting there with the whole city in front of them, it had been home, and with the destruction in their upstate facility, well they needed a new home. 

With Morgan settled in her mini workshop with DUM-E taking care of her, Tony sat at his work bench wondering about talking whether he really should be talking to someone. Maybe Bruce was right, and he needed to talk to someone, but he couldn’t figure out who to talk to. Of course, this is when a portal opens up in his  work shop and an irritated Dr. Strange shows up with a guy that looks like Steve but isn’t Steve, because apparently Richards is still messing with things he couldn’t understand and somehow transported another person. Time travel he could deal with but portals into other universes, well that was something he was not ready for in anyway.

“I’m going to take care of Dr. Richards’ mistake, but until we can safely send our guest home, I’m leaving them with you,” Strange said and without another word vanishes. Fucking hell, he hated magic.

Although, this may solve the problem of whether he should be right in freaking out about asking Steve out, who's to say that all the Steve Rogers of all the multiverses out there aren’t the same. The other Tony shared his name, so shouldn’t that mean that this Steve Rogers shared something with the one in Tony’s own universe. Maybe if he talked to this version of Steve, he would understand the man better, but then again, he could be completely different than the Steve currently upstairs. Plus, this one was wearing a wedding ring, fucking hell Steve probably married Peggy in another universe or something and is a father of three with a house, a dog, and a white picket fence.

“Uncle Steve,” Morgan called out before running towards the man and launching herself at him. That was another thing that had changed recently, Morgan’s affections towards the blonde man, after everything that had happened and Tony’s own battle to live, well Morgan had come out of her shell a little more. She bonded with  all of the Avengers, but for some reason Steve had become her second favorite, because Tony of course being her favorite.

The man standing before him looked confused, staring down at Tony’s little hyperactive bundle of joy, Tony saw the man’s eyes widening and looking at Tony confused. 

“You may come from a universe where she doesn’t exist,” Tony said smiling at this Steve, or should he call him Rogers to keep him separated from his Steve, well it's not like Steve was his or anything... whatever.

“Uh, no it’s more along the lines that she’s never called me Uncle Steve, it’s usually Dad or Pops,” Rogers said, and it threw Tony a little off of his axis, hell he could have fallen off of the building for all that it mattered.

“Give me a minute,” Tony said pulling out his phone and texting Peter to come and get Morgan because he needed to hear this story. Of course, it helps that Morgan loves Peter like a big brother,  and Peter loves her too, which is nice that they get those moments after everything. But also, it’s a good use of distraction... for the  both of them .

It didn’t take long for the teenager to show up, probably thinking that they were going to upgrade something, but that would have to wait honestly.

“Mr. Stark, you called,” Peter said just as the door opened only for him to gape at Steve standing in front of him. “Mr. Captain, how did you get down here so fast?” Tony couldn’t help but snort the moment the words had come out of Peter’s mouth he didn’t know what to call Steve whenever the super soldier was around, somedays it was Captain Rogers others it was Mr. Rogers, which only turned into a disaster when Clint had given Steve a cardigan and a pair of sneakers. Mr. Captain was a new one though, and it was something different for sure.

“ Uhh ,” Steve said looking between them and the little tyke strapped to his leg. “I... um....”

“You even changed your clothes and everything, that’s amazing,” Peter said looking over at the man, if there was one thing that Tony knew without a doubt it was that the kid had a love for superheroes that couldn’t be matched by any other fan, no avenger was an exception to that, he loved them all equally but mostly because he loved learning about their powers.

“Um, well, you see,” Steve  started, and it only fueled Tony’s need to laugh even more. “A little help would be nice,” Steve whispered to him.

“Peter,” Tony said smiling before  helping out the lost Captain. “Can you take care of Morgan for a little while I have to speak with Steve about something rather important.”

“Oh, okay, come on Iron Girl, let's go watch a movie,” Peter said still looking between Tony and Steve probably wondering how the super soldier had gotten to the workshop so quickly.

“ Ohh , can I pick?” Morgan said, his little girl also has a case of hero worship, and maybe a crush on Spiderman, though this was something that Tony was not going to go anywhere near, she’s a kid she’s allowed a crush especially when her old man has his own problems, and yes it involves a crush but sue him okay. “See you later daddy,” she called out.

“Okay sweetie,” Steve said and if it hadn’t been for the closing doors, she would have asked a million more questions, hell Tony had a million questions  at the moment . He looked over at Rogers standing there and he could see the man cringing. “I probably shouldn’t have answered that, but in my defense, she looks just like my  daughter, so it was a reflex.”

“You have a kid named Morgan?” Tony asked because he wanted to know the whole story, the multiverse theory was something else and he wanted to know everything about it, or at least everything about whether this Steve had something special with his world’s Tony.

“Yeah, well my wife named her after one of her best friend’s eccentric uncles, she thought it was funny, but after hearing it I told her that I liked the name, so we went ahead with it.”

“Your... wife?” 

“Yeah, her name is Natasha, though I call her Tasha,” Rogers said and honestly Tony was just in shock, because he couldn’t see Nat with anyone other than Barnes at this point with the way the two went around.

“You married Romanoff?” Tony yelled out, it wasn’t very tactful on his part, but come one he didn’t know what else to think.

“Nat, no I’m not married to Nat, Bucky would have my ass if I even went near his girl, no, my wife’s name is Natasha Stark, which by the way... um... does this world have a Natasha Stark here too?” 

Honestly, Tony wasn’t surprised that his mouth was hanging open, he honestly didn’t know what to think at this point, because apparently in this man’s world Tony had been born a woman, are you kidding me hear, honestly this is insane. Though he did wonder if he looked good as a woman from time to time, and yes, he wore those lifts in his shoes, but what guy wouldn’t want to know what he looked like as a woman?

“No, there’s no Natasha Stark here,” he said still not sure about what he was hearing. “I’m the only Stark left, and my name is Tony, well actually it’s Anthony Edward Stark, but that doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, so I’ve landed in one of those universes,” Rogers said and Tony didn’t know what to think, if his mouth could hit the floor like some old cartoon well it would have broken through several floors by now.

“Wait, this has happened before?” he said as he came out of his stupor, “As in this happens all of the time, every other day, week, month, year.”

“Well not every day, it’s happened one other time to me, and three times to Tasha, though it stopped for a while after we had our little girl.”

“So, Morgan, in your universe, is your biological daughter?”

“Yes, I’m guessing not in this one,” Rogers asked, and Tony could only shake his head. “That makes sense, I was wondering why she was here in the first place, this is the first time I’ve seen her outside of my own world.”

There was a lot to unpack there, but he was also thinking that this was probably the best person for Tony to talk to, the guy was married to his alter ego, maybe he could shed some light into what it’s like for Captain America to well be married to Iron Man, would she still be Iron Man, or would it be Iron Woman?

“Where’s your husband? I’m guessing Morgan was from a surrogate?” 

“No,” he said feeling like it would be better for the room to swallow him whole, there was a lot to unpack from  all of this moment honestly. “Morgan’s mom is Pepper, we were married.”

“Oh,” Rogers said looking a little sad. “So, I’m not with you here?”

“Have my other multiverse selves that you’ve run into, have they been married to your counterparts?”

“Well, in one place you two were engaged according to Tash, in another there was a Civil War and things were decidedly bad, the marriage had broken down but they were in counselling to repair it, but there were a lot of other things that had happened in between, but I didn’t ask.”

“Civil War you say,” Tony  said, and he couldn’t help but feel a pain in his chest, “They fought each other, didn’t they?”

“Yes, I'm guessing from the sound of it you had the same here?”

“Probably, though I doubt it was the same kind of fight,” when he had thought about talking it out with someone, well he hadn’t planned on it going anywhere near that part of his life.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Rogers asked a sympathetic look in his eyes. “I heard that I’m a good listener, though it’s from a six-year-old so I wouldn’t put too much faith in that.”

“Sure, plus it may take some time to figure this whole mess out and send you home.”

“I wouldn’t put my money on that, Tasha is probably digging out the machine she used last time to find me so it might take about an hour, her workshop is a mess right now,” he was smiling to himself as he said it as if this were something that happened all of the time. “She’s having a moment.”

“Is this a good or bad moment.”

Rogers turned that megawatt smile at him, “It’s good, she’s pregnant, though she’s a little irritable right now for certain reasons.... so, if she pulls me out of here in a huff it’s because of that.”

Tony wanted to know more about this, but honestly it felt like too much to ask about  at the moment , especially with the current circumstances, although it did give him an idea. “Can we borrow that machine to send anyone else who shows up back to their own world?”

“Not really, I mean she stole it from Richards because he kept messing with the multiverse, but she’d need it to keep the portal open and make sure nothing else happened along the way.”

“So, is Richards just an ass in every universe?”

“Maybe, but we’re getting away from what you really want to talk about,” Rogers said giving him that same look, we all know that look, it’s the one that Steve gives everyone when he wants the person he’s talking to, to get to the point, but with Tony it’s always a million words just to get there because for some reason lately the blonde was making him a nervous wreck.

Just as Tony was about to start talking , seriously this  was his life, another portal opened and a voice called out for Steve, “My darling husband , beloved, where are you,”  the female voice said before turning to where they were sitting. “Oh well looking good there Tony… it is  Tony right,” she  said, and he automatically knew that this was Natasha Stark, his other counterpart, and surprisingly they were the same hei ght. 

Honestly, he wonde red why she looked so young compared to him, Tony was in his fifties and she didn’t look a day older than  thirty-eight, the multiverse was messing with him. Though  it did bode well for this Steve to have someone as young as he was , or at least closer in age, it brought up a million questions but they didn’t have time because it meant that the person who was going to listen to him was going away.

“Hi honey,” Rogers said his eyes shining as he walked ov er to his wife. She kissed him , of course she did , but  it didn’t take long  before she had turned the full force of the Stark geni us on Tony. It was weird to see himself as a woman who was analyzing him at the same time , though he was a little proud that he looked good as a woman.

“Nice arm, is  it nano tech?” She asked pulling on Tony’s arm, honestly, he was self-conscious about it, he showed it off and even started a line of prosthetics for SI because of it, but no one outside of his closest friends and family have  actually touched it. And yes, he knew that this person was him in another life, but it was still weird.

“The suit is nano tech, the arm is just a terrible side effect of something else,” he said honestly, it was hard to  lie to himself even if this other him was a woman. A woman who was paying more attention to the mechanics of his arm over anything else happening around them.

“Reminds me of Bucky’s arm in a way,” she said turning it over a couple of times , honestly he was glad that it was so well made because the way she was twisting it he would have lost his arm for the second time.

“ Tasha, I don’t think that Tony feels too comfortable with you ogling his arm like that,” Rogers said trying to  pry his very pregnant wife away from Tony. 

“But have you see n this, my god, this is a work of genius, I need to know more because Nat wants me to enhance Bucky’s arm before the wedding, at least so that it stops sti cking as much as it does,” she said turning his arm over again before slowly making her way up until she reached  the scarring at his shoulder, Tony couldn’t help but pull the sleeve back down.  “Sorry,” she mumbled before stepping back and looking him in the eyes.

“Um, as you can see, I’m you and not you at the same time, but the multiverse is vast and wide so who knows just how different all of our counterparts are, I’m pretty sure that in one of them Steve is a girl, or we’re both girls, ” she stopped talking for a moment then smiled and said, “ I need to look into that.”

“ Uhhh ,” Tony had no words for this, hell he had no words for everything that was happening right at that moment , there was another Tony Stark somewhere upstairs, and now he had these two, and they had Morgan in their world, and she  looked younger, why couldn’t he get to go back to looking that young, maybe warn himself about a couple of things , telling him to take it easy or something .

“I feel like there’s a story to all of that happening there too,” she said bluntly pointing at his f ace, her eyes so  similar to his own it scared him. There wasn’t as much pain in them as he hel d in his own heart, it made him want to know the story of their lives.

“Uh, yeah, it’s a really long story, there’ s all kinds of mishaps, and magical gemstones, a mad titan and well, maybe thi ngs you already know about.”

“Not really,” she said sitting down where Rogers had been. “I’ve learned from every one of our counterparts that I’ve met, that all of our stories are vastly different, not all of us have had the same experiences in our lives.”

“Oh … well, if you two weren’t leaving we could compare notes,” he said honestly, he would love to learn more about them, they seem like they have everything put together.

“We have time, Morgan’s out with her aunt and uncles to day, she’s actually spending the weekend with Rhodey and Carol, who decided to bring Peter and  Harley along with them, which is just going to end spectacularly, so, they can live without us for a few hours… wel l, at least until Peter  or Harley  do something stupid because they only tagged along so that they could  test Peter’s new web  shooters, and Morgan wanted to see because she’s attached to them as if they were he r big brothers .”

“Tasha, are you sure?” Rogers asked sitting next to his wife , his hand on her back slowly rubbing circles. “We could get stuck here.”

“We won’t I modified that stupid invent ion the last time this happened, at the most we have five hours to spare before it would leave us here, ” she said and while Tony knew that she was cursing Reed Richards, it was so mething else to watch the way their eyes worked.

“Fri, can you set a timer for our guests?” Tony asked his AI knowing that he wanted to hear this story for himself.

“You have FRIDAY here?”  Tasha asked her eyes wide, “We have a different AI at home, but I  don’t know the extent of your life so we might have ha d vastly different experiences.”

“She’s going to ask a million  questions, it’s what she does,” Rogers said to him with a smile on his face. Why couldn’t Steve look at him like that damn it.

“ My girl FRIDAY,” Tasha said, “Give us three hours, that gives us enough time to talk and order some food,  because I’m starved, and so is our little bundle of joy.”

“Of course,  Mrs ,” FRIDAY answered.

“It’s Stark-Rogers, but you can call me Mrs., if you want, it’s cool.”

“Is it really, the other day you yelled at a teenager for calling you that,” Rogers said causing his wife to glare at him, Rogers put his hands up in defeat, which only showed Tony that the man would do anything for the woman he loves, even if it’s contradictory to how she would normally act. “Fine, fine, but don’t get snippy about it later.”

“I won’t,” she said kissing her husband before turning the full force of her attention to Tony, honestly was he  actually like that or was that something she only did. “Tell me your story,” she said.

The story had been simple, everyone knew most of the  details of Tony’s life, but watching the fascination on his multiverse female counterpart was just weird, the moment he had gotten to the Civil War aspect of his life they were eating a mountain of pizza from  Ray’s and he had tried to hide just how heartbroken he had been over losing his family.

“In our world we got married just before our version of the accords, ” she said with a small smile, “I guess sometimes life works differently for everyone.”

“Yeah I guess so,” he answered  trying to not feel any kind of resentment towards the life the couple had, the life he wished he could have now.

It was after he explained the extent of his injuries in regards to the stones, and the fact that he had been legally dead for ha lf an hour before a mixture of extremis and Steve’s blood had saved him from death that he noticed just how intense her staring had been. 

Honestly that day had be en a blur after the snap, he remembered having Peter and Pepper there, he remembered Rhodey, behind them he saw his family, the Avengers s tanding still. The pain had been horrible, and he knew his time  had come, but there were always small miracles, and very experimental treatments, that helped bring him  back. The scarring was there for the rest of his life,  but his eye healed thanks to the help of the cradle,  his arm was beyond repair and he hadn’t realized just  how bad it could have been until he had woken up to the pain. He thought he had died that  day and like with what had happened during the Battle of New York, he had come out on the  other side, still alive. Strangely enough, with Steve by his side, Pepper having passed out , sleeping in one of the bedroom s in the compound with Morgan. 

In the year and a half since, his marriage had fallen apart, not because of Steve, but because Pepper honestly wanted a quiet life and Tony knew  that  he couldn’t give that to her. Though she’s happier now just being the CEO and running the company while being a mom to their daughter, she had even started dating though who it was, well it was still a mystery, but he hadn’t held any resentment towards that. She was happy and Tony was happy just being a dad and working on the Avengers, mostly behind the scenes, he didn’t get to o hands on as of late, but mostly because he had to think of his daughter.

“So, where does your Steve come i nto this?” Rogers asked and his wife elbowed him in the side all the while rolling a piece of  chocolate into her pizza. “You know you want to know.”

“He’s getting to it, you know just as much as I do just how slow we can be, come on Steve think about how long it took you to ask me out, I thought the whole thing was one sided the whole time,” she said biting into her pizza. “Plus, remember how you did eventually ask me out, you freaking tripped on the couch and landed right in my hooch, for crying out loud, it’s not like we can trip this Steve to land on this Tony’s dick now can we.”

Tony couldn’t help but watch R ogers’ face turn red before he had started laughing, “Really, that’s how you asked her out?”

“It was an accident , I had flowers and everything, but my shoe got caught on the rug and well it went to hell, but this isn’t about that is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Tony said sighing into his chair , it was nice to watch the pair, but it made him long for something he didn’t have.

“So, when did you notice you liked him?”  s he asked eagerly, as if Tony’s life was her favorite television  show.

So, they were actually back to the root of the problem , well remember that t-shirt, well that had been the start of it, even if he had wanted to blame Richards for how bad every thing went, it had actually started with that shirt.  Stupid shirt was the  bane of his  existence , because it had been that shirt that had made Tony question Steve ’s sexuality. It had been a gag gift for Christmas from Natasha,  Romanoff if you were wondering,  and yes, she survived but that’s a story for another time. Anyway,  Steve had gotten the one that said Tall Best Friend, his  shield proudly displayed on it, Bucky had gotten the one that said Short Best Friend, tha t damn star on it. The two had worn the shirt proudly for weeks, honestly at that point To ny had thought that the two soldiers were dating with how much they hung out.

There had been  days when they had been together non-stop, Sam and Nat with them, going to baseball games, minor league only because they hated the majors now, even though Tony said that he would bring the Dodgers back to Brooklyn if they wanted it that badly.  They said no, calling the Dodgers traitors for leaving in the first place.  The group would end up all over the city,  helping out in one place or another, volunteering at soup kitchens , or just causing a ruckus all around. The  papers were calling them the A-Team,  but many of them had started questioning Steve and Bucky’s relationship, mainly  in regard to those damn shirts. It wasn’t  Tony’s fault that he had been jealous, hell he had wanted to rip the damn thing  off of Steve and hide it.

“Really a  t-shirt,” Rogers said looking at Tony as if he were going nuts, when Tasha smacked his arm. “What it’s  ridiculous, would you think that Bucky and I had a thing going i f it were something like that.”

She sat there silent for a moment only to have Rogers look at her like she was holding something back, “It happened okay, if you hadn’t actually asked me out, I would have gone on thinking that you and your bestie had a thing going on.”

“Ahh so this isn’t just a me thing then,” Tony said sighing and leaning back into his chair. “Good to know that I’m not the only one who  has gone through this.”

“Yeah well, you try to get this one over here to stop b eing a wimp, or in his words pussy footing around,” she said, and while Tony saw that  there was no malice in her words, he also saw the one thing he yearned the most for. “There’s more to this story isn’t there?”

For course there was more to the story, the culmination being that Tony found out that Bucky was dating Natasha this whole time , and the only reason he had found out about this was because another Tony had arrived and stuck to Steve like glue. This is where he starts blaming  Richards for everything going to hell in his own life, they hadn’t been able to get that Tony back to his own world when this Steve had arrived, but then he had a genius for a wife.

“Seriously there’s another one of us here, and it’s Richards fault,” Tasha said  and there it was the hatred in her eyes for the one guy who continuously messed with their lives. “Does he ha ve superpowers here too?”

“Well yeah, but he got those after the whole Thanos thing,” Tony said while watching his multiverse self-sigh.

“I really wish that he hadn’t gott en them sometimes, maybe it would have mellowed him out a bit, but I guess if Steve is Cap in every universe, then it means that Richa rds is also an outright dick too.”

“Tash, hon, be nice please,” Rogers said but she rolled her eyes. “ I know you have issues with him but leave him to his wife to deal with.”

“Yeah, sure whatever,” sh e mumbled, it was like watching something he wished he had,  yeah, he had had it with Pepper to an  extent but never like this.

Just as he was about to ask another question  to the couple, the doors to his workshop opene d and in walked the other Tony along with Steve who just looked confused until he saw his own counterpart sitting with Tony and Tasha. It re ally was a weird day, that wasn’t something he would deny, but hell it would have been nice to have a little warning, though they were in the mid dle of something so of course a distraction would get him everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

“Tony, ” Steve said stopping to assess the situation in front of him. “ Uhh ,  Morgan said something about seeing me down he re, but then she saw this guy and she was utterly confused so I thought I’d check it out,” Steve  finished before making his way over to where they sat. 

The workshop in the Tower had been moved several floors down to accommodate  all of the newer Avengers and also to give Tony the chance to work without so many people being able to look inside of the room. Honestly, he couldn’t figure out if it had been his own vanity that had made him put glass walls around the workshop the second time the tower had been rebuilt. He moved it and sealed up the room as tightly as he could, there was a way for Iron Man to get out without having to go to the helipad, and it had a play place for Morgan as well.

“Oh, hi,” Rogers said getting up and shaking Steve’s hand. “Of course, you know who I am, as we share a similar face, and this is my wife Natasha Stark-Rogers.”

At those words Steve stopped, taking in the very pregnant woman sitting with him, Tony knew that the blonde was trying to process this all, and before he could say anything the other Tony moved forward smiling. Of course, the man would notice, he had stuck to Steve like glue since getting here, but that could also have been Tony’s fault for hiding the moment it had happened, he had work to do. But… there was also the fact that he had hated just how easily that man flirted with Steve when Tony, who had been a flirt and playboy for a long time damn it, couldn’t get a word in without fumbling lately.

“Ahh, Natasha it’s good to see you  again,” the other him said and Tony just wanted to drown himself, because of course the universe saw fit to send his doppelgänger  who had already met Tasha.

“Oh, my gods, your Tony from Earth 12041, I can’t believe it,” Tasha  said, and Tony just watched in fascination as his counterparts moved towards each other. “How’s Steve doing?”

“Well he’s probably freaking out  right about now, honestly I don’t know how this keeps happening, but it’s great to see you, though I thought you would have had your baby by now.”

“Oh, that was ages ago, this is baby number two in fact,” she said beaming at the other Tony.

* * *

Wait , lets rewind a little here, because there’s another side to this story, and one  that needed to be told by another person, of course that person being Steve.

* * *

This part of the story had started with a time heist, well actually it had started the day that  spaceship had landed at the now destroyed Avengers compound. After not seeing Tony for years, just that small moment where he had run towards the man had been enough to solidify his feelings. He couldn’t help the feelings of jealousy that had had come up when Pepper had come in a taken Tony out of his arms. It was stupid, it was really, really  dumb honestly, he shouldn’t be jealous, he shouldn’t be anything but relieved that his once teammate was still alive. There were a lot of other things that still pissed him off, mostly those had to do with how he had handled the whole debacle that had started after he had found out that Bucky had  been  live, but those were his burdens to bare.

Of course, the time heist  happened, and Steve honestly thought that Tony had been flirting with him, but Tony had been married and had a family, it couldn’t happen, even when he had wanted it. Then… well we all know that part of the story right, Thanos comes and Tony snaps his fingers and Steve realized that he had lost something big, his chance again . His heart broke in those moments,  and he couldn’t understand how he  would deal with los ing Tony. He had already lost his first real friend in this century he couldn’t lose Tony too. He may have done something stupid after that, as the tears spilled down his face, CPR was a thing, FRIDAY couldn’t have been right, and well he had also taken Tony towards the incoming  helicarrier , because Fury had been extremely late but who cares. He had forced himself into the damn ship and towards the med bay, making them give Tony a transfusion of Steve’s own blood until he was stable enough to get into surgery.

The rest of that day had been a blur, he had donated too much blood and had been forced by his friends, to sit down and sleep before he collapsed. Steve had slept for two days after that, exhausted over everything that had happened as well as what he’d just done. When he had woken up Tony was in recovery and he had to go and help Bruce return the stones, with Thor and Rocket’s help. As he stood in New York, about to return the time stone, he thought about his life, his past and the fact that he could have gone back and lived his whole life with Peggy. He could have, but he hadn’t, because even just being by Tony’s side was enough for him. 

There was a moment when he had started dating Sharon again, where everything felt like it would be okay, he could leave his crush on Tony behind and start living again. It hadn’t lasted, both him and Sharon had been too busy to make the relationship work at all, Sharon had once again joined the newly formed SHIELD and Steve had thrown himself into rebuilding projects that had come up after everyone had come back. With Sam he still went to his weekly meetings, although now instead of grief, they talked about rebuilding their lives, and in some cases moving on from what they had left behind.

Sam now had the shield, Steve had decided to step down from being Captain America, to those at the compound he was Commander Rogers, he hadn’t wanted to be tied to the shield and the name for a while, honestly, he just wanted to live for himself and not the name he had stood for his whole life. Although he was still the leader of the Avengers, he led from the tower most of the time or worked with SHIELD in deploying the Avengers to where they were needed. Outside of that he spent time working on himself for once, learning about the people around him instead of dwelling on the past he missed out on. 

One of the things that he started doing was hanging out with Tony, it had started with outings, Steve normally going to a museum and asking if anyone wanted to go. Later evolving into trips to the Zoo, Tony wanting to take Morgan out instead of being stuck in the workshop, or to dinner, which was mostly just Steve dragging Tony out of the workshop. They even started hanging out, Steve had been there when Tony fitted on the specialized red and gold prosthetic, which looked a lot like a modified Iron Man arm, which just turned into Tony and Bucky trying to see who was the strongest arm wrestler, metal arm versus metal arm, they broke a table that day, Morgan cheering for her father in the background, Steve holding her up so she could see the craziness her father was up to. 

Slowly these became things that he looked forward to, friendship was all that he was going to get with Tony anyway. That was until Tony told him about the separation, and the eventual divorce, that he had been going through. Those had been some of the hardest months for Tony, usually he talked to Steve about feeling like a failure.

“I just don’t know how to stop being... well me,” Tony had told him while staring at the wall in his workshop. He had destroyed a good  chu n k of it trying to take out his aggression.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with who you are,” Steve told the man who plagued his every thought. “Maybe, it’s just the magnitude of everything that we’ve all gone through, it’s too much for some people.”

“Well it was too much for her,” he had answered slowly crying next to Steve. 

Tony had looked numb to everything for a while after that, at least until Morgan showed up and told him that it was okay that Mommy and Daddy weren’t together. His little girl understanding more than she should at such a young age, but she was Tony and Pepper’s kid, and well she was surrounded by a bunch of superheroes. Steve honestly saw a strength in that little girl, one that came from her parents, but she was her own person and would be a force to reckon with when she grew up.

Over time they grew together, Steve was always  there, and Tony had stopped calling him Cap, and while FRIDAY called him Commander, at Tony’s request, the man himself had started calling him pet names, well that was  what Natasha had told him they were . Though there had been on very memorable day where Tony had called him beloved, but Steve had thought it had been a fluke, nothing real, at least that’s what he thought, though in his heart he started planning their first date.  Though  Steve  actually having the courage to go and as k Tony out had become a bit of a problem, and one that had led to his so-called friends taking bets on how long it would take for Steve to actually do it. 

After the last failed attempted, and honestly it wasn’t his fault that Dr. Doom had decided to grace them with his presence, it turned into Richards basically transporting a Tony from another universe, honestly the twenty-first century was a mystery, but there he was standing in the tower like he owned the place. Though he probably did somewhere, but there was something in his eyes that Steve’s Tony didn’t have, though this Tony looked younger in a way, and he had a ring on his hand so it could have meant that the man had married Pepper in his own universe as well. That was when Tony rushed off towards his workshop muttering about killing Richards, leaving Steve with this new Tony, who looked at him with a smile and a wink. Though Tony leave could have had more to do with the other world Tony outright flirting with him. The man has a wedding ring on for crying out loud why is he flirting with Steve?

That question was answered maybe an hour after his Tony had rushed off, “My Steve would love this,” Stark said, he’s Stark because he doesn’t want Tony to get angry over Steve being friendly with any other person who looked like him. Steve still felt like he was walking on eggshells around Tony, well only on days when the genius inventor was angry at him, even if it was something, he had had no control over.

“What do you mean your Steve?” Steve had asked out of curiosity, mostly because he had wanted to know more about this man, in hopes of getting some kind of insight to Tony... or at least a way to find out how to ask the man out on a date without stumbling through his words.

“My husband Steve Rogers,” Stark  said, and Steve honestly choked on air, he had left his guard down and choked without thought because this was his life. It took him a good minute to catch his breath, because super soldier or not he was still human. Stark rubbing his back as he tried to get some air in his lungs. “I’m guessing you’re not married in this universe?”

“What... do... you... mean... in... this... universe?” he asked, taking a breath after each word, because it was still a little hard to form sentences at all.

“Oh, I don’t think I should get involved, I’ve been told that I could mess with the fabric of  time or  the space time continuum,” Stark answered effectively avoiding the question at hand. “Or at least that’s what I’ve been told by several of my teammates.”

“Listen,” Steve said finally able to breathe, “I need to know that if I ask Tony out that he would say yes, and if this is something you, as someone who looks and very much acts like him, can tell me, well you have to tell me.”

If there was one thing that this entire mess can accomplish, it was that Steve would finally find out if Tony liked him in the romantic sense, or else Steve was just wasting time on someone who doesn’t want him. It didn’t feel like a waste of time, but Steve honestly felt lost when he thought about the possibility of Tony just not liking him at all.

“Trust me, if your Tony is anything like me, even if we only share one trait, that one trait would be that he’s had a boner for you since... well forever, it’s a common thing among all of the versions of myself that I’ve met on accident over the years.”

The words were a shock to the system, how Tony in any universe could like Steve that much would be a miracle, but then again it could be that this Stark hasn’t gone through the same pain that Tony has, or at least in the sense of the pain that Steve has caused Tony over the years. They were past that, they had been for a long time, but there would always be that what if scenario of whether their lives would have been different if Steve had done one thing over another.

“And how many have you met?” he asked wanting to know if there was enough data, as Tony would tell him, to go on this man’s word. 

_ Replication is key here Steve _ , Tony would tell him, so Steve knew that the answer here would be based on whether it was a constant thing that happened over all worlds.

“Well counting you and this Tony Stark, I’d say four in total, five if you count me and my husband,” Stark said smiling to himself. “Steve would be surprised too considering he was sure that we would be together in any universe.”

Steve felt himself fall backwards, he didn’t fall to the ground if that’s what you’re thinking, but that was only because the counter in the kitchen was holding him up. There were four universes out there where him and Tony were together, as in a couple, four places where they had found one another and without incident, wait this could be something he needed more information on. 

_ You  _ _ must _ _ know  _ _ all of _ _ the factors before you make a hypothesis, _ Tony would say to him.  _ Without  _ _ all of _ _ the facts you wouldn’t know for sure if it would work. _

“Can I ask you something,” he said and when Stark had given him a nod Steve just went for it, “Did any of them fight over things, like superhuman registration or a secret?”

“Well from what I know, only one got together without any major incident, but they do fight over little things, I fought with Steve because I had kept Arsenal and Ultron secret from him, it had been bad enough that Steve went to work for SHIELD full time and took half the team with him.”

“What’s Arsenal?” Steve really was curious, but it mostly had to do with him trying to make sure that he knew as much as he could.

“He was a robot my dad invented for me that had been corrupted by Ultron, though in the end he saved my ass, and ultimately gave me the chance to reconcile with Steve.”

“Oh, what about the other two?”

“Well in one I had been a teenager at an academy, Steve had been defrosted and they worked together, but their fights normally had school sanctioned events involved, so I don’t know if that counts, though they still had villain,” Stark shrugged like it hadn’t been a big deal. “The last one though was a harder pill to swallow, honestly I don’t know how they came out of it and still cared about one another.”

Hearing those words made Steve feel hopeful and scared all at once, yes him and Tony worked through their past, and yes, they had gone through a lot before and after the fight with Thanos, but after everything he had some hope. But, there’s always a chance that something else might come along and ruin everything, if Steve did something else, or Tony did something as well. Honestly, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if they’d severed the Avengers again.

“Can you tell me, or is it something that is too personal,” he said in a desperate attempt to find out more, to curb the possibility of it happening with them.

“Well, that place had two civil wars, in one Steve died, he had been shot on the steps of the courthouse on his way to a trial over what he had done during the war, in the other well their Tony died trying to change some kind of vision that would have killed Steve at the hands of Spider-man, not Peter Parker though, it was a different Spider-man.”

The feeling of his heart stopping was one thing he was not ready for, either of them dying at any point was something that he couldn’t fathom. It had been a possibility not too long ago, the image of Tony sitting there unmoving after the snap was one that haunted him in his dreams, but it wasn’t something that he was truly ready to live through in any circumstance. 

“Easy  there big guy,” Stark said guiding Steve towards a chair. “A lot of things happened after that first war , and before th e second one , but I doubt any of that would happen here, if I’ve learned anything from all of this it’s that every universe is different, though we share the bare minimum, what we do have in common is usually altered based on our own world.”

“It almost happened here, we almost lost Tony not too long ago,” Steve said feeling the weight of what had happened baring down on him.

“Yeah, but their Tony is still alive and kicking, actually they both are, sometimes honestly the universe works in weird ways, and if magic could just go away, we would be better off but they survived it, hell we all survived somehow.”

“Yeah, that’s not as helpful as it sounds.”

“Nothing will help until you actually talk to your Tony about this, I mean in this universe from what I’ve seen, he has a kid, he’s divorced, that’s something different,” Stark said shrugging. “Sometimes we’re together from the beginning and sometimes we’re not.”

He understood that, as weird as it sounded, but he understood it, from the sound of it, no matter what Steve would always be with Tony. “Can I ask who asked who out? Well at least between you and your husband.”

“Ahh, now that’s a story,” Stark said sitting down looking as if he could fall even more in love. “Remember that fight I said we had, well before that we lived in a perpetual push and pull, honestly I thought I was going crazy because of it, I mean there were moments... a lot of moments, where I thought why am I waiting for him to make a move, and it took a good while for me to try, and a few near-death experiences, but even with that it took a while.”

Steve heard someone shuffling behind him, the tell-tale sign of Morgan going off with her father, and the little piece of himself that wished he could go off with the pair. Instead he stayed and listened to Stark’s story, because he needed to know if he could learn anything about asking someone out. There was Natasha, Bucky and Sam but the three of them just did things that were weird in a lot of ways. Like the best friend shirts that Natasha had gotten him and Bucky, while he liked them in the back of his mind he wondered if there were boyfriend shirts. If he could ask Tony to wear one if they started dating.

“So, after Steve and the rest of the team went back to the tower,” Stark  continued, and Steve realized that he needed to pay attention to the story. “We went back to that weird little push and pull between the two of us, there was still this weird thing happening. Then one  day  he up and disappears, so Nat and I find him  at , get this, some weird castle on a cliff, he had been brainwashed by  Zemo into uncovering something, but then again it was one plot from  Zemo out of a few to have the Avengers fall apart , but that day I think the worry was what got to me.”

“Why were you worry ing , other than the fact that  Zemo is a horrible person,” Steve said, honestly, he had flinched when Stark had mentioned  Zemo . There was a part of him that wished he had never heard the man’s name, but even Bucky and Sam had an encounter with the man when they had taken a mission. 

“Well  Zemo had been a bad guy along the lines of the Red Skull when it came to Steve, his father had worked in the same circle back then so his own son trying the same thing well it worried me. Steve actually asked me out after that, he had said that he had already lost a lot and having  Zemo , even just his son, show up and mess with his mind showed him that he didn't wanted to lose another moment just waiting until the fighting stopped.”

“I understand what he’s saying,” honestly, he understood this more than anyone, he didn’t want to lose another moment but it’s just so hard sometimes to work up the courage. Put him in front of an alien army and he’ll lead the team, put him in front of Tony for five seconds just to ask the man to dinner, well then, all hope was lost. Geez Bucky had been right all of those years ago, he really was useless when it came to  dating .

“Of course, you would know, especially since you and him probably share a similar history, like how Steve for a long time talked about missed moments before that day, how he missed his chance with Peggy Carter, how he messed up by not catching Bucky, but he wasn’t going to lose time anymore. After that he asked me out, we got engaged a few months later, and then all hell broke loose again.”

There in Stark’s eyes were the wariness that Steve normally saw in Tony’s eyes, there was a story there, one that Stark was willing to tell him just so that he fully understands what it means to lose something just when you think you’ve finally crossed that threshold and there was supposed to be a light at the other end.

“Ultron messed everything up, used my own tech against me, and took over my own body,” Stark sighed, this could have happened a long time ago but in his eyes it could have been yesterday. To  Steve the thought was terrifying, the things that Ultron could have done to Tony, to the world at large if he had done this would have been worse than the robot’s original plans. “The only way to keep Ultron at bay was to trap me in another dimension, away from everyone and everything that I knew. Steve was one of the last people I  saw, and I couldn’t even touch him.”

“You’re married now so I’m guessing there was a happy ending?”

“ Of course, there was, even the reunion was dramatic, I saved him and Nat from zombie mummies,” Stark said looking proud of himself. “We got married soon after that.”

Steve could tell that there was more to this story, but he didn’t want to ask, he didn’t want to know how many ways he could lose Tony, he’d already seen some of the worse and doesn’t wish to relive any of them. 

“I can tell when your mind is wandering to the worse of it all, it happens, but it’s different in every place, what you really need is to talk to him, and not just the little things, but really talk to him about what you want. I know a thing or two about missed opportunities, and I don’t ever want to relive any of them either, but moving forward means taking chances, so you need to take a chance.”

Steve nodded at that, wondering how he could go to Tony and ask him about the possibility of the two of them having anything in the future. The opportunity came when Peter walked in with Morgan on his shoulders, the little girl squealing as he ran into the room.

“Oh, you’re not my daddy,” she said pointing at Stark. “But you look like my daddy.”

“Oh well this is new, I mean I know that I’ve met one of my  descendants, but I hadn’t known that there would be an actual child in my future, I thought that... well with everything.”

“Hi Uncle Steve,” the little girl said never taking her eyes off of Stark, “I thought you were with Daddy, I saw you with him when Dr. Stranger dropped you off.”

“What?” Steve said in surprise, honestly, he shouldn’t be surprised at anything happening to any of them at all. Though it was a shock  all of the same, he couldn’t even fathom the odds of not just another version of Tony showing up, but another version of himself as well, well... that was just crazy as it is. 

“Yeah, I saw him too,” Peter said looking between Steve and Stark, “I know you’re not Mr. Stark because you’re taller than he is.”

Stark let out a short laugh before turning to Steve, “Really, how short am I in this universe?”

Steve knew that it was most likely the curiosity in the genius, Tony would probably question it too if he hadn’t run off every time Steve had been in the room. But now was not the time, he had to see this other version of himself, to know if this man was a threat to Tony, or even to Steve’s chances with Tony. Instead of answering the question, he got up and went to the elevator, he needed to see if Tony was alright, yeah that was the reason for this, nothing else. Stark quickly followed him, probably curious as well about the new visitor.

* * *

Now, we’re back to where we were, and of course Steve’s shocked expression at seeing Stark embracing this Natasha woman, who didn’t look like Nat at all was a little weird. Tony knew that  look, she understood Steve’s confused face from anywhere. Mainly because it had been there whenever they would give him any kind of pop culture  reference or introduce something to the man.

“Who are these people,” Steve asked him  looking at the two new guest confused, but since their guests were a little preoccupied, he wasn’t too worried about answering the question.

“Apparently, in their universe, I’m a woman,” Tony told him with a smile. “And I’m married to you.”

“What?” Steve called out, drawing the attention of their guests.

That was when Tasha looked over at them with a smile. “I think we should get going, my ankles are  swollen, and I need to get my husband back home.”

“Do you think you could give me a ride home?” his other male self-asked, which weirded him out on so many levels.

“Yeah, if that’s okay with you two?” Tasha asked him and Tony just shrugged his shoulders, because as much as he wanted to be able to learn more about the machine that had brought her here, he honestly just wanted to get rid of that other Tony so that he wouldn’t be able to flirt with Steve.

With a flash of light their guests were gone, leaving Tony alone in the workshop with Steve, and honestly that was the only person he could stand to be with right now.

“They’re married,” Steve yelled out the moment they were  alone, and Tony remembered the fact that he was going to have to explain it all to the man. He couldn’t even wrap his head around it  either, but it was what it was. 

“Yeah, apparently it’s a thing,” he answered before digging into the now cold food in front of him. “They have a kid and everything, well other than the one she’s currently carrying.”

Steve honestly was a little too quiet after that, sitting  down right next to him just staring out into the nothingness, because honestly Tony knew that the man wasn’t paying attention to anything that was really happening in the workshop.

“Stark was married too,” he said taking Tony by surprised, honestly the fact that his own self was married in any universe and made it work was a miracle in any sense. 

“Who was he was married to?”

“Me,” Steve  said, and Tony honestly could have either spit out the food in his mouth or choked, but being the genius that he was, well he did both. It took Steve hitting him several times on his back before he could find his bearings again. “Yeah, I was a little shocked too, but apparently he’s met four other versions of us that have been married.”

Honestly Tony didn’t know what to do, or even what to say, what could have been the odds that Steve wasn’t attracted to him in anyway, even Tasha and Rogers said that there was a possibility, but four different universes where he ended with Steve, that was just something else to even think about. He wanted to say something, he was about to say something, when they were interrupted by his daughter and Peter walking into the room right as the Avengers alarm went off. This was not going to be the day he asked Steve out, no matter how much he tried.


	2. Exes

Even though they had broken off their relationship, Steve was still friends with Sharon, who god help her, was working with Sam, Bucky, and Natasha. Steve honestly thought that Sharon and Nat were the only ones with brain cells left to deal with Sam and Bucky’s constant fighting. The three of them had a standing lunch date, where Sharon allowed herself to let out all of her frustrations with the two men, sometimes Nat joined them, if anything it was nice just to hear their opinions on things that he was still learning about even after coming out of the ice near fifteen years before. The future wasn’t always confusing, but now he had his own things to deal with, mostly one thing, and that very much had to do with Tony... because it was Tony. 

“Do you know what those two did the other day?” Sharon asked them as they settled into a seat at a coffee shop near the tower. 

“What would they have done now?” he asked curious at what his friends were up to.

“Nothing is as bad as that day that they got into that fight with the Wrecking Crew and because they didn’t have their weapons,” Natasha said slowly rolling her eyes, “they started throwing wet paper towels at them.”

“Honestly I don’t know why Fury thought it would be a good idea to put them together,” Sharon said slumping into her chair. “Back to the story, the other day they got together with Spiderman and made an actual web, was it so that they could catch a criminal, no, they were trying to see if bullets could break through it, and when they were done with that, they started sticking themselves to it to see how long it would take to break free.”

“Oh, I remember that, it took me two hours to wash that stuff out of James’s hair, I think there was an egg shell in there too,” Natasha added, she had been dating Bucky ever since she had gotten back from where ever the soul stone had left her. Steve didn’t know how they had gotten together at all, he hadn’t even known that they were together until he accidentally walked in one the pair doing something that could have been mistaken for gymnastics if it weren’t for the fact that they had been naked and well he honestly didn’t want to remember what they had been doing at that point.

“I don’t even know why we’re talking about this, especially since we need to address the very large elephant in the room,” Sharon said looking Steve straight in the eye , which only cause Natasha to look at him as well, as if he were holding back on anything they didn’t already know, they were spies, he couldn’t  hide anything from them even if he tried.

“I was wondering if this was going to be something we were going to be talking about today,” Natasha added, honestly this whole thing was just now making him feel extremely  uncomfortable. “I mean we’ve ignored it for the last month ever since your doppelgängers came and went.”

He didn’t know exactly how they had found out about his little crush, or had he been that obvious, he wasn’t sure, all he knew was that the moment that they had found out the nagging had started. They wanted to know every single detail, of course since he hadn’t  actually asked Tony out on a date, well that just turned into them telling him of ways to ask someone out.

“I haven’t asked him out yet,” he said knowing that this would just turn them against him, he didn’t really want this to start but he knew that it was coming.

“Why is it so hard for you to ask him out Steve,” Natasha said taking a sip of her coffee. 

“He’s not really good at asking people out,” Sharon said laughing before adding . “I mean when he asked me out it sounded like some weird innuendo, though he did get better at it, but honestly what we  had wasn’t meant to be a thing.”

“I kissed him once ,” Na tasha said pointing to Steve, and honestly it wasn’t something th at he had wanted anyone to bring up, just the thought of Nat and Sharon even comparing anything when it came to him was  a little strange. “I t was weird, like kissing my own brother and I don’t have brothers.”

“Do you two just get together so that you can make fun of me or is that how you are whenever  I’m around ?” Steve asked looking between the two. “I can leave and you two  can continue this conversation without me.”

“ Noooo ,” they both said  holding him down. He complied but only because he wasn’t sure if he would survive if he  actually left .  It was hard to get away from two people who were literally trained in killing people, even if Sharon s wore that she never actually hurt anyone.

“Let’s start with something easy since you’re incapable of actually saying the words ,” Natas ha said  first. “There has to be something that the two of you can talk about, I mean, I know you talk all of the time but there has to be something else.”

“Did you know that my Aunt was actually Tony’s godmother,” Sharon said taking Steve’s attention away from  the drink he was about to take . “Why do you look so surprised, she had been a friend of Howard ’s so there wou ld have always been a small chance that Tony would have known her in some way.”

“Now that you mention it, I remember that she knew a man by the name of Edwin Jarvis , which was the name of Tony’s first A.I.,” Natasha added. “There could be a connection there as wel l, I mean what would the odd of that be.”

“But what does this have to do with what we’re trying to do now?” Sharon questioned, and honestly Steve was just leaving the two women to their conversation, he was learning more about Tony and Peggy without asking anyone  any actual questions. 

“Do you know anything about whether the two of them  actually got to know one another?”

“Aunt Peggy used to tell me about her dear Anthony, at least before she forgot him all  together, it was weird that he was the one memory that had disappeared during that time , but I could never figure out who she had been talking about .”

Steve tuned out the res t of the conversation, he was thinking back to Tony, to the day Steve himself had found out about Peggy’s death . He remembered that before he left , he had seen Tony in the conference room alone just drinking something. He ne ver talked to the man after their whole conversation in that same room , he had written Tony off so quickly because of course at the time so much had been happening. Now that he thought back to that moment , he understood a little more about Tony, he had been grieving someone else in his life. If what Sharon was saying was true, then  Tony would have stopped visiting Peggy long before Steve had come out of the ice, but she was well off in her assisted living center, she w as always surrounded by the best that money could offer. He now understood that Tony may have played a part in that, and  it only made Steve feel even more like an ass for not noticing. It was just one of the many ways their relationship back then hadn’t  been very  good. It was something that he wanted to rectify now, especially since he had realized his own feelings.

“Hey,  Steve,” Natasha said bringing him back to the present. “You okay there?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, can we get off of the topic of Tony and  Peggy please,  it’s too much to think about right now,” and there was even more that he had to atone for now, even though Tony would just tell him that he w as being over dramatic about the whole thing. Which could very well be true, god this whole thing just made him feel mel ancholy and he hated it.

“Sure,” Sharon said ,  “Let’s talk about ways you can ask him out, I bet he would like a gesture that ’ll  make him smile, I mean he has to wish for something so normal, especially with everything he has.

“Oh , I remember Pepper telling me something about a giant bunny he had gotten her, and while she didn’t like it , I bet it would be so mething that Tony would like,” Natasha said taking out her phone. “She sent me a picture of it before the Malibu hou se went under, the thing was huge and really weird , but I think it would be something that he’s never gotten himself as a kid.”

“I know something better, take him to a carnival,  you could win a stuffed animal for him using your strength, the bigger the better, ” Sharon had  this look in her eyes, he had seen it when they had been dating but he couldn’t figure out what it meant, honestly he was hopeless when it  came to romance. “A nd do cliché  things like ride the Ferris Wheel to the top and kiss him once the ride stopped.”

“That actually sounds kind of romantic,” Natasha said , and  Steve nodded for a moment. “ It’s also cliché as hell, but for Tony it would be something he would like.”

“Do you think that would actually work?” Steve asked  genuinely interested in this now. “I mean every time I’ve tried to even bring it up something happens.”

“Yes, but if it’s an Avengers  team thing, it will be fine,” Sharon suggested. 

“Now that I think about it, if the Avengers go out together villains tend to stay away, but when they know we’re  separated they attack,” Natasha said, and he knew that she was right,  the last time he tried was when Doctor Doom had come, and after that  multiverse versions of themselves appeared, 

They talked about it a little more, they knew that for this  to work, the Avengers would have to stay in the city .  The only place he could think about having this kind of attraction would be Coney Island, which only made him laugh . It was something he knew very well, and while  it was now considered Luna Park and had grown since he remembered, it also had a lot of things from when he had gone  with Bucky as kids. They planned on it being an Avengers free day, so that everyone would see them all, but the only exception was that  Steve and Tony would be alone. Natasha had suggested  having everyone pair up, it would be easy with couples but  for those who were single, they would have to pair up with someone.

As the plans further progressed, Steve  actually felt confident that this would work, or at least it would bring him and Tony toget her. Though he did like the idea of them kissing on the Ferris wheel, he knew that he needed to take  some kind of initiative on this or  else he would lose his chance. He didn’t want to lose anything anymore , so he was going to try his best.

When they separated, each headed their own way, Natasha to the Tower to speak with Bucky, Sharon to SHIELD to prepare for a mission, he couldn’t help but follow Sharon, he wanted to know one more thing, and honestly he didn’t want that conversation to happen with Natasha listening in. 

“It’s nice of you to walk me to work and everything Steve, but I think I can handle it on my own,” Sharon said as they started their walk.

“I actually wanted to ask you something… out of hearing range from Nat, because while I don’t mind her knowing everything this is too personal to ask with someone else around.”

“Sure,” she said smiling at him. 

“Was I a good person to be in a relationship with?”

Sharon laughed out loud at that, and it wasn’t the best thing to hear when he was already feeling insecure about everything else in his romantic life. “Honestly, that is not what I expected this conversation to be about.”

“I just want some simple honesty, I want to know if I can make it work with anyone,” he  wasn’t sure about where this conversation was going to go judging from her current reaction.

“Honestly speaking,  some of it had been awkward , that kiss back before you went off to your little fight while Sam and James had been watching was  really awkward , but you tried your best. There had been some good moments, but the second you had that fight with Stark, with what  Zemo had hidden, I think that’s when I knew for certain that this wasn’t going to go anywhere. Even when we saw one another I could tell that you were distracted.”

He understood what she was talking about, that was when he had ripped the star  off of his uniform, the A that had once proclaimed him as an Avenger was gone as well. All he had left of his life were his friends, hell even when Natasha had shown up, he realized just how far his choices had taken him. Tony had been left without the Avengers, they had all followed Steve, and the sheer thought of it had reminded him that even with that phone and the letter it would never have been enough to atone for all of his sins. His relationship with Sharon had fallen apart because of it, most of the time he was just looking for updates on Tony, but she had been busy and then the fight against Thanos had happened. He had later learned that she had been one of those people who had been snapped out of existence, another missed opportunity for him, but it hadn’t eaten him up as much as whether Tony had lived or died on another planet.

“If you want my honest opinion,” she said just as they turned the corner where the New York SHIELD offices were. “I think you were in love with him long before we were ever together, you just didn’t know it. I think the same went for him when it came to you, but you both had your priorities.”

“Do you really think that?”

“Yes, I think that if this had all happened under different circumstances you two wouldn’t have gone through half of what you went through.”

With that she left him standing there, which only left him with his own thoughts, because this was the second person in his life that had told him something like this. Strangely enough, the first had been that multiverse version of Tony .  It gave hi m a lot to think about, especially since the one person other than Peggy that’s he’s been in any kind of romantic relationship with told him that  could have been in love with Tony for years. He always believed that it had been a more recent revelation, but now he’s gotten the perspective from several people.

* * *

While Steve had been out with Sha ron and Natasha, Tony was agonizing over whether Steve had gotten back together with Sharon, in Pepper’s office . His CEO and ex-wife  was still his friend, and the fact that she was now in a myst erious relationship with someone, and wouldn’t tell him, the audacity, was something else completely. Tony had given Stark Industries its own building further uptown than Avengers tower, it was closer to Morgan’s private school and he had given Pepper the Fifth Avenue mansion that his parents had left him. It wasn’t their cabin, though he had left that to Pepper in the divorce, not because he was losing those memories of them living there but because he had wanted her to have a place to escape to if anything happened in the future. So of course, because he needed someone else’s perspective on his life, he had found himself in her office, she always knew how his mind worked so it was possible that she could figure out how to fix him when it came to Steve.

“They’re not back together Tony,” she said to him pushing him  off of her desk where he had been perched . Instead of going to a chair he sat down on the floor like a child, honestly how Pepper put up with him, Tony  would never understand. “Are you pouting?”

“No, I’m not,” he said hiding his own face.

“The great Tony Stark can’t ask one person out, my goodness I need video of this moment, I never thought the day would come.”

“Hey , I asked you out just fine.”

“Ton y it took you years to realize you liked me like that, you were always so into your work and y our hobbies,” she s aid hobbies in air quotes, which Tony knew was more about how  Tony had pretty much slept his way around the world and never settled down. “B ut this is different, you’re actually pouting over this.”

“ I don’t pout, ” and of course he did the very thing that she had accused him of, which only made him angry at  himself for doing it. Though he wondered about his relationship with Pepper and how it has over the years survived so much. “How can we still be friends after all of what we’ve been through?” Curiosity got the better of him over this so of course he had to ask.

“I wonder that sometimes, but honestly I think it’s because we had  been friends for long before we were together, you’re family to me, even now that we’re parents, but I also know that we’re both happier when we’re apart. It took me a long time and I’ll admit some therapy to understand that.”

“You went to therapy because of me, geez I feel like a monster,” he said smiling, she knew he was joking, the playful push of her leg against his arm told him so. 

“We have Morgan to think about, we have this company to think about, I have my new relationship and you have the Avengers. It was wrong of me to try and make you choose between Iron Man and us  all of those years ago and I see that now. I can’t make you pick between the thing you love and care about, so maybe  Steve will be better for you in that sense because he understands the sacrifices it takes to try and have both.”

“You’re too smart for your own good.”

“Well there’s a different between being smart and being a genius, but then again I learned that from being your assistant, and now as your ex-wife I want to know what you’re going to do about whatever is going on between the two of you?”

And there it was, the  million-dollar question that had been hanging over him ever since he realized just how much he cared for a person who a few years ago had literally broken his heart . So, why after all of that, couldn’t he let go of the man, even after the snap, he honestly thought he had died, except now he had a mixture of extremis and Steve’s super soldier serum running through his own veins. He never asked Steve why he had saved him, why he had chosen to save him, when all he wanted was for all of this to be over, and yes there had been a lot of dark thoughts running through his mind when that whole shitshow had happened, but he never understood.

“Can I ask you something about Steve?” he honestly just wanted a reason to find out more information about whether this whole thing was even remotely possible. He already had evidence that it was possible since he’s met a few multiverse versions of himself who were in fact married to their own multiverse versions of Steve, but his Steve wasn’t doing anything that would warrant a relationship, or had he missed it all.

“Sure,” she said signing papers at her desk without looking down to where he was currently sitting. 

“Do you think that Steve likes me like that,” he said knowing it sounded like something out of a high school romcom, but he didn’t know how to phrase it.

Pepper let out a laugh before dropping her pen and pulling herself away from the desk just to rightfully look him in the eye. “I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t been in the picture years ago, the two of you would have been married by now, and I realized that after the decimation had happened, but since you two fought I had thought that maybe in my own delusion, that you didn’t like him like that.”

“What do you mean? I would have noticed something like that.”

“Honestly Tony, you wouldn’t have,” she took his face in her hands, it felt more like a loving  gesture between friends, and while he still loved and cared about Pepper it didn’t feel romantic anymore. “You are one of my best friends, but you’re so dumb when it comes to certain things that you miss all of the details.”

“Hey,” he said pulling away from her. “I’m a certified genius you know.”

“ Yes, you are, but you’re also emotionally stunted in so many ways ,” she told him and honestly, he could have yelled that it wasn’t true but years with Howard well it was entirely possible but he wanted to think he had some kind of emotional capacity. “Listen, you’re good with kids, but you’re bad at romantic relationships or at least acknowledging that there could be one so it’s possible that you’ve missed the signs all of these years.”

“And how did you come up with this conclusion?”

She sighed leaning back into her chair and closing her eyes for a moment as if she were remembering a specific point in their lives where she realized that Steve may like him in any kind of way. If she had to think about it  than that meant that he had missed years of signs, years of well  anything, and even though he knew that he had blatantly flirted with Steve throughout the years he would never have cheated on Pepper. It was fun to banter with Steve in that flirty way, even though he never actually did that with any of the other Avengers. With Bruce he had science, Clint well they had this weird bond over food and Clint’s arrows, Thor, well there was a multitude of stories from the God himself, and honestly Tony was fascinated by the possibility of a place like  Asgard , even though it doesn’t exist anymore. There was his weird relationship with Natasha, one that went back the furthest, outside of Coulson and Fury, but he still couldn’t understand why they were friends, though he saw the small sadness in her eyes whenever she looked at Morgan. He was still trying to understand  all of the others, five years had passed, there wasn’t a way to get that time back, but he was trying. Outside of Peter, he was still getting to know his fellow teammates.

“Remember that day you came back from Space, when the ship landed?” she said pulling him out of his thoughts . “When Nebula was walking you out of the ship.”

“Yeah I remember,” it had been single point of relief just to get home after everything that had happened. “Why are we back to that moment in  our lives?”

“Well, the moment you had stepped off the ship Steve had been the one to run to you, he  outran all of us, no one had the chance to catch up, and his one goal had been you.”

“ Uhhh ,” he was honestly confused about this.

“Tony, the moment you pulled away from him he had gotten this look on his face, like you had broken his heart without even trying, I mean you did yell at him later on but again the whole thing looked like you two had gone through a bad break up and he was trying to get back together with you.”

“Was I just too angry to notice any of this?”

“Maybe, I mean the man probably would have given you whatever you wanted just as long as you forgave him. You moved on, well tried to after that, Steve never really did, he had been trying to hold onto his past because even the future had failed him, and he in turn failed you and it hurt him more than anything.”

“Wow,” he honestly couldn’t remember a lot from those days, he had been all but delirious at the time and half dead if he thought about it, but he did remember those moments, the relief at seeing that Steve had survived. The anger he had had hadn’t  been towards Steve at that moment, it had been more towards himself for losing that fight, for losing everyone he knew.

_ “Turns out,  _ **_ resentment is corrosive, and I hate it _ ** _.” _

Those words, from the day he had said them to Steve had been about himself as much as Steve, he had to atone for everything he couldn’t do, and while he had done his best afterwards, he thought that giving his life for everyone else would have been the ultimate way to go. He hadn’t expected to wake up afterwards honestly, but now, seeing Morgan growing up, having Peter around as her big brother, having his team back and even seeing Pepper happy with whoever it was she was currently dating was enough.

“Listen to m e Tony Stark, as your ex-wife, I want you to be happy, and honestly if it means that you and Steve get together like you should have years ago, well that just means that maybe we were in  each other’s way when it came to who we were really meant to be with. ”

“And who exactly  were you meant to be with?” he knew he was deflecting from the conversation about himself because honestly, he was curious.

“When the time is right, I’ll tell you.”

“And when will that be?”

“Listen if you and Steve finally get together, I’ll tell you, until then, well go home I have work to do right now.”

“Fine, I know when I’m not wanted.”

“Have a good day Tony, I’ll send Morgan over this weekend,” she said, and he waved at her walking out of the office, thinking about what she had just told him. 

As he walked to the tower, yes he was walking he needed time to think, he looked back to that day she had told him about, he looked back to every single interaction he had had with Steve in the last fifteen years.  He did tend to flirt a lot more with Steve than anyone else he’s known in a long time.  Of course, he  had said a thing or two towards any of the other Avengers, but just the things he had said and did when it came to Steve had been a little more forward if he thought about it. 

Then he thought back to the day the ship had landed, the image of Steve running towards him and the utter relief he had felt from seeing him. At that moment he hadn’t really thought of anyone else, other than telling Steve about losing Peter, he hadn’t really thought about anything else. Just talking to him about losing the way we had, just having him there was enough, then he saw Pepper and his mind reminded him that there were other people out there that he needed to think about, other people that needed him as much as he needed them. He never saw Steve’s face the moment he had let go but hearing about it from Pepper was enough to make him wonder if he had really missed  all of the signs. 

Had he been that delusional about all of this? 

Now after everything, after losing his arm, his failed marriage, all the while still seeing his daughter growing and happy, with Steve right there by his side talking with him being there like he hadn’t before. That’s when he thought about the feelings he could have towards the other man, but it had already been building inside of him over the years and he had just ignored it because he already had other things in his life.

“Well now I just feel stupid,” he said out loud as he walked up towards the tower entrance.

“And what do you have to feel stupid about,” Steve’s voice said from behind him, making Tony jump, honestly these people were trying to kill him just coming up from out of nowhere.

“Nothing,” he will never admit to the fact that his voice did that weird little squeak that it did when he said something, but yes it did happen. Somehow Steve made him feel like a teenager with a crush who would just fawn all over the person they wanted to be with. He didn’t want to be that person he was an adult for crying out loud. Yet, the feeling was a nice one, it meant that he was giving himself the chance to feel like that again. 

“Well something is going on with you,” Steve said, and this only reminded Tony just how observant Steve was. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Does he say yes, no, instead nothing comes out of his mouth because Steve’s hand is currently touching his and there was that teenage crush making itself known in the worst possible way. This was his life, one look into those blue eyes and he was a puddle of nothingness and nothing else really mattered. Honestly though, how can someone’s eyes be so blue, it was like looking at the sky or into the deepest depths of the ocean, he could drown in them and be alright with that.

“Tony,” Steve said pulling Tony out of the thought process he was currently going on and it was going places honestly. 

“Yeah, um,” he cleared his throat, because he needed to have a clear head even though Steve was touching him, and it was doing things to him. Why hadn’t he noticed any of this before now? “I don’t need to talk about that… nope, not at all.”

For a moment Steve looked like Tony had said the wrong words and he didn’t know how to recover from that, he thought about how to recover from this, he needed to recover from this. What would his  multiverse self do ? Well she had said something about the fact that the only reason Steve had finally asked her out was because he had fallen on her crotch but that wasn’t an option  at the moment . He had been better about this before, right? He had successfully asked people out before, right? So why was this so hard now, damn it.

“Okay, I’m just going to head on up then,” Steve said pulling away and Tony felt like he had lost something.

“Wait,” he stopped Steve, and now he was holding onto the man’s hand and it was so warm, science help him because he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t functioning  at the moment . “Um… we could get something to drink upstairs and talk, or something.”

Yes, that’s the way to go, that’s how it was supposed to go, but for some reason that was the hardest thing that he had ever said in his life. Is this what Pepper had been telling him, or had he  actually been this dense his whole like.

“I would like that,” Steve said smiling an him and yup he was a puddle on the floor, nothing else mattered to him outside of that.

Of course, they never got that drink, because something outside exploded and shattered the glass of his freaking building, all the while Steve was protecting him from the blast. This was his life, honestly why things happened like this was beyond his own control.


	3. Tabloids, kids, and A.I.’s

People Magazine has  obtained  an exclusive photo of the two leaders of the Avengers right before their last fight  outside of Avengers Tower in  Manhattan when the villain known as Doctor Doom, unleashed a series of mechanical robots on the city in an attempt at luring out the Fantastic Four. It seems that Iron Man, Tony Stark, and Captain America, Steve Rogers, were having a discussion in the lobby of Avengers Tower before the blast hit and that Rogers used his body to shield his lover

Though no one knows what the conversation was about, sources close to the Avengers say that the couple have been hiding their relationship for years now and that it may have been the cause of Stark’s divorce from Virginia “Pepper” Potts, who is the mother of Stark’s child. Though when asked for a comment Potts said that Stark had been a wonderful husband and that his relationship with Rogers or any of the Avengers wasn’t the cause of their divorce.

“We just grew apart after everything that had happened,” she said as she exited the New York Stark Industries headquarters.

Whether this is true or not, a lot of people are very interested in  whether or not the two leaders of the Avengers are really involved in a relationship or are they headed in that direction. We will just have to wait and see.

* * *

Some fans have been speculating about the possible relationship between the two leaders of the Avengers for years, after speaking to several fans and with the trending hashtag # superhusbands on twitter, we at Buzzfeed would like to know are the two leaders headed down the aisle of is it just fan speculation?

One tweet from twitter user  CaptMarvelRox also known as Kamala Kahn, who has called herself one of their biggest fans, wrote, “About damn time, you could melt butter with the chemistry between the two of them.

YouTube user Spider-Guy said in a video, “Honestly I thought they had been together for years.” Further stating that he honestly believes that after everything that had happened during the Battle for Earth that the two leaders would eventually find themselves together and happy.

While there are hundreds of comments about the possible relationship with the two Avengers, and while some are positive others are negative, those coming directly from Fox News anchors who believe that Stark is soiling and national icon. Conservative pundits are calling for Stark’s resignation from the Avengers and that the trending hashtag be redacted as it was offensive to what the Captain stood for.

* * *

These weren’t real, nope he was ignoring the fact that someone had been there when he was in the middle of acting like a teenage girl in  a late 90’s romcom. Also, he needed to find Peter and throttle  him, why the hell was n’t Peter saying anything about this to him. Could this be why the kid was avoiding him the last two days, and how had he missed any of this.

“FRIDAY are you hiding things from me?” he asked his A.I. reading the rest of the article.

“No  Boss , I just believed that it would be in your best interests to recover from your last battle before you saw these articles, also Mr. Parker wished to have a head start before you tracked him down.”

“Of course he did,” Tony said running a hand down his face, he honestly didn’t know what to do about this anymore, every single time he tried to say something or at least set something up the universe stepped in, or Doctor Doom did. The man was living up to his name if his only goal was to make sure that Tony never got a date with Steve.

Now, of course now he had to contend with the freaking tabloids zeroing in on the whole dilemma and how just incompetent Tony really was when it came to  asking someone out at all. He honestly just wanted a break, on e chance to  actually try and ask Steve out, hell if he only got one chance he would probably propose right then and there to see if the universe was going to swallow him whole.

“FRIDAY, I know you’re just my creation and all, but tell me honestly, do you think I have a chance with Steve?” he had resorted to this, asking his own A.I. for advice on his romantic life, or lack thereof.

“If I may be frank with  you boss,” she said and Tony just waved it off, he just wanted to get this over with. “Very well boss, I believe that you can Captain Rogers would make an acceptable pair, and while I cannot betray the confidence of others I do believe from your interactions with the Captain it  may be possible that he feels the same way.”

His jaw dropped, he was honestly shocked that she would say that when Steve never said anything himself, though now that he thought about  it, he was  pretty certain that Steve was just as bad at this as he was. There was a story of how he had asked Sharon out, and he remembered how  it Aunt Peggy had told him how Steve never even came close to asking him out. She had been the one to do it, though that date never happened but that was the tragic story of Captain America, well at least the one that he had been told when he was growing up. Though he was glad that Aunt Peggy never actually got that date because this whole thing would be incredibly awkward now.

“Should I ask him out or should I wait until after the next battle?” he asked, mostly out of curiosity, but also because every time he came close something nearby blew up.

“I suggest you wait at least until after the battle boss,” she said and he couldn’t help but smile, maybe that was the way to go about it.

“I’ll wait, hopefully it will go my way this time.”

* * *

U.S. Weekly Exclusive

The relationship between Iron Man, Tony Stark, and Captain America, Steve Rogers is heating up, as reported to US Weekly weeks before the photos that broke the internet went viral, Stark and Rogers were well on their way to becoming New York’s most powerful super couple. Sources say that the two of them are constantly together, though questions about Rogers fidelity have been brought up as the man had been seen outside of SHIELD’s New York headquarters with an unidentified blonde woman. Their relationship is unknown, though some have said that the two are just friends. But the woman in question is said to be Rogers former flame, this story will update as we learn more information.

* * *

Steve couldn’t help but feel embarrassed over the fact that the tabloids were all speculating about his love life. Though it had happened once before, after the Battle of New York, when everyone was speculating that he and Natasha were a couple but since that wasn’t  true, he had brushed it off. Now when he was actively trying to ask Tony out, they had seen them holding hands and decided that the two were already an item before he could even say the words. 

The elevator arriving was a welcome reprieve from reading through everything the world was writing about him and Tony, honestly, he didn’t know how Tony could handle these things for so long. When he looked up, he saw Pepper and Morgan walking into the Avengers living space hand in hand. The little girl’s eyes lit up at the sight of him being the one sitting there, though he was quick to turn off the tablet he had been looking at, just to hide the article from the little girl.

“Hey Steve, can you take Morgan for a little while,” Pepper said as the little girl broke free from her mother and launched herself at Steve. “I need to talk to Tony about signing some papers and that only means that it’s going to take a few minutes because I have to pull him away from whatever it  is, he’s working on.”

“Yeah, that’s alright,” he said, he honestly loved the little girl, she was as much Tony as she was her mother, though as she grew  up, she turned more into her own person. He couldn’t wait to see what she did in the future.

“Hi Uncle Steve,” Morgan said when her mother had left. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, you can ask me anything,” he said as he settled the little girl into the seat beside his own. 

“Are you going to marry my daddy,” she said and honestly, he should have known that she was going to be blunt about it. She used to be so shy, hiding behind her parents, never interacting with anyone, but that all changed the moment she started school because she now said anything that’s on her mind without consequence.

“Uh,” he was speechless, which was bad  at the moment , he needed to say something… anything . “Where did you hear that from?”

“Well, Jake from school said that he heard from his mom that she read something saying that you and my daddy are together.”

“Would you be okay with me dating your dad?” Steve asked, he knew that at some point they would have this conversation, but he had been hoping that he would  actually be with Tony when it happened and not before.

“Well, I like you, and you take me for ice cream, plus you protect daddy,” she said looking at him. “You’re nice to me, and you cook a lot better than mommy or daddy, even though daddy makes better hamburgers.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at her words, though he knew that she was just telling him these things because of what was being said in the media. He knew that what she said would be what moved his relationship with Tony forward or ended it completely. For Tony, his daughter was everything, and without her approval Steve wouldn’t have the chance to even get close enough to the man, which broke his heart a little just thinking about it.

“But I do want my daddy to be happy,” she continued giving Steve a big smile. “And he’s always happy when he’s around you. ”

It’s a good thing she didn’t know about everything that had happened before she was born, though if this worked out, he feared the day that she found out about it all.

“Would it be okay to keep this between the two of us, because I really want to talk to your dad about it first,” he said and when she nodded, he knew that she wouldn’t say a word. “The same goes for you FRIDAY.”

“Of course, Captain,” the A.I. said though she knew he was no longer a Captain he guessed it was Tony’s doing that she still called him that.

“Okay, now, we should make dinner right,” he asked Morgan who stood up on the chair and gave him a salute. “What would you like to eat?”

“Can you make that pie thing you made last time, I liked the potato as a topping,” she said, and he couldn’t help but nod.

“Sheppard’s Pie it is, we can start now and make everything together, and while it’s cooking, we can bake dessert too.”

* * *

As the two of them set off to work on dinner, Tony was interrupted from his thoughts when Pepper walked into the workshop with a stack of papers in her hand. For a moment he thought that they were papers for him to sign but instead she dropped a stack of magazines in front of him. He honestly didn’t want to have this conversation right now it had just been a moment  and in the  end , he couldn’t even get a date because of the explosion.

“I’m guessing that you still haven’t asked him out,” she said sitting across from him. “Even though the whole world now thinks that the two of you are actually dating.”

“It’s not my fault honestly, it’s Dr. Doom,” he said slumping down. “What am I going to do Pep, I honestly couldn’t even ask him out if I tried and trust me, I tried.”

“Just give it some time, who knows maybe he’s going to ask you out,” she said before pulling out actual paperwork. “Now please sign these, they’re for the next generation of Stark tech, we need your approval that the products are ready for launch.”

“Isn’t that why I have you as C.E.O.?”

“Yes, but you wanted to have the final approval on these , so sign the papers,” she shoved the papers in his hand and started looking through the stack of magazine. “You know I wonder who this so-called source is.”

“I’ve been wondering that too, but honestly it could just be someone whose seen us together in the building, a lot of people work here you know.”

“Are you scared?”

“No, not really, I think I’m more worried that I won’t get my chance to actually ask,” which was the  honest truth , but he didn’t want to worry her more than he already had over the years. “Maybe next time it will happen.”

“You’ll get there don’t worry your head off,” she said, and he signed the last of the papers handing back to her. “Now, since that’s done, maybe we can go upstairs and have a family dinner, I’m sure that Steve and Morgan are already cooking.”

It was one thing that he knew for certain, it had been a surprise to see that Morgan and Steve had bonded over  cooking, mainly because she knew just how bad he was at it, but Steve was always patient with Morgan explaining to her every little thing with detail. He was like that with everyone,  with the exception of the bad guys that they faced on a regular basis, but Tony figured that he had always been that way. In a way they both were, but just in different ways, again making him realize just how much he had missed for so long.

* * *

Fox News has received a statement given to them by several conservative groups lamenting the loss of an American hero and how this is a step away from true American Values. “We all grew up with stories of Captain America’s heroism, having his good name sullied by Tony Stark is something we will not tolerate under any circumstances.” When asked for a comment the Captain Rogers said that it wasn’t up to the American people who he cared for and that he wasn’t willing to remark on any relationships he has had or could have in the future. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.” 


	4. Drunken Night in Vegas

The day that Steve had decided to ask Tony on a date had  actually landed them in Las Vegas, well actually an area just outside of the city, Doctor Doom was at it again, attacking a Stark Industries facility that regularly ran experiments for Richards. Tony had been kind enough to lend the man the facility, mainly to keep him from blowing up New York. The fight had lasted well into the night , the team had been exhausted but none of them had wanted to go back home, because according to Sam they were in Vegas and they should take advantage of that fact. 

So, Tony got the team the penthouse suite in one of the more  glamorous hotels and everyone divided  the rooms between themselves, surprisingly leaving the last room to Steve and Tony both. He knew that this had been Natasha’s doing, but Steve wasn’t going to stop her from trying. Especially since she was honestly sick and tired of dealing with the pining as she had put it , “Get your shit together Rogers,” she had said before walking off to the room she was sharing with Bucky and Sam .

That ’s w h ere  they find them selves , exhausted and  in a room together, Natasha was right about one thing, he really did need to end this torment, and maybe now that there was no battle ahead of th em, he could actually get away with asking Tony out. Except when he walked into the room, Tony was  in the shower and Steve just felt awkward waiting for the man to come out. He walked out and sat in the living area a s Clint, who had joined them for the mission, because his wife wanted some time alone and practically begged them to take him for a few days , was standing. He was mixing drinks at the bar while Thor  was randomly comment ing on how one of the drinks needed something extra, so Clint added a mountain of cherries which made Thor happy.

“Ahh, good friend, come join us,” Thor called out. It gave Steve something to do while he waited for his  chance in the shower.

Of course , Thor had brought his endless flask of Asgardian mead, which only meant that  Steve never really got to take that shower. The moment Tony had come out,  all of the Avengers had also joi ned them , and they all drank what Clint served up. Steve knew that he couldn’t get drunk, well not  unless it was from Thor’s mead, which meant that half of the night was a blur since the Avengers all  thought it was a good idea to get ha mmered after the long battle.

If only he had slowed down, then maybe he could have remembered what had happened next .

* * *

There was a moment where Thor was making a reference to a song before passing Steve each drink that had been mentioned, of course Clint had made sure that  all of the drinks made for both Thor and Steve had an extra kick in them. Things got a little hazy after the fifth drink, and it was a strange feeling, but he felt warm inside and it didn’t matter.

.

.

.

Why was he holding onto Tony’s hand, wow his lips were so pink even with the goatee, he wondered what it would be like to just have a taste. Also, where was everyone, he could have sworn that they had all walked down the Vegas strip together. But Tony’s lips were pink, and his face was too, they really had too much to drink, but he liked the rosy cheeks on the smaller man. 

“I like that you’re so short,” Steve said, which only caused Tony to startle. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way, just that you fit right in my arms.”

.

.

.

They were in a casino, one of the big ones, Clint handed him another drink and honestly, he knew he should stop but he was having fun for once. Tony was sitting next to him and they were playing something, Steve was certain he was losing, but Tony had said that if he won, they should do something, and he really wanted to say yes.

Tony won.

Steve lost.

Something was happening.

.

.

.

They lost everyone else at some point, and he didn’t care because Tony was with him and he was happy that they could finally have some alone time. It’s  really hard to get some alone time when you’re a  superhero , the only other person there was Elvis. He learned about Elvis, even liked some of his songs, not that he would have admitted it to anyone, especially Tony, but in the background one of the slower ones was playing and they were dancing. There was a moment when Steve thought to hell with it, and finally captured Tony’s face in his hands and leaned down. There was cheering in the background, but all he could concentrate on was the softness of Tony’s lips coupled with the roughness of his goatee.

* * *

The song waking up in Vegas was playing in the background, honestly Tony thought that was just a part of a weird dream, but no it was  actually playing from his phone. FRIDAY was trying to tell him something, but all he wanted to do was burrow his way into the bed and never get up again. Whoever let Thor and Clint make the drinks the night before should be thrown off the roof of the building, honestly, who left them in charge? It might have been Tony’s own fault for taking too long in the shower, but he had fallen into something during the fight and just wanted to wash it off. There had also been the fact that he was sharing a room with Steve and of course the room only had one bed, because this was his life.

The song started to get louder, and  honestly, he was going to rewire FRIDAY’s circuits if she kept at it. But there was no way around it other than finding his phone, he could have said  something, but  his only reaction was to groan and slowly pat his hand around looking for the offending device. Just as he was about to get up, just to find the thing and throw it into the toilet, he felt something grip onto him holding him tighter. He knew he was supposed to be sharing a room with Steve, but usually when they shared Steve slept on the floor or Tony was too wired to  actually sleep so they talked until Steve eventually passed out.

If there was ever a moment where Tony stayed still long enough for someone to notice this would be the moment, even with his phone playing the song and his need to shut it off he didn’t move. He could tell that he was wearing something, at least pants, but his shirt was gone and apparently so was Steve’s because he could feel every muscle of Steve’s chest against his back. The man was a sauna the way he radiated heat, but it felt  really nice and honestly Tony couldn’t help but lean back against him. If only Doctor Doom would leave them alone long enough for Tony to say something maybe he could have this.

There was a moment of silence, when the song ended and Tony thought he could go back to sleep and relish in the fact that he was in bed with Steve, but that was short lived when the phone started ringing, and it was  Rhodey’s ringtone which meant something was happening. Resigning himself to his fate, he tried to pry himself away from the warmth of Steve just to go find his phone, but then Steve grumbled behind him reached around, grabbed Tony’s phone from who the hell knows where and then crushed it in his hand.

This was the moment he learned that Steve Rogers was not a morning person, no matter how  many times  the man woke up to go on runs at the crack of dawn, the man did not like to be woken up. The pieces of the phone were thrown across the room, as if they could shatter at any moment, and if Tony hadn’t been fully awake before, well he sure was now and that single display from Steve had also made him horny for the man. He was fucking doomed. Steve on the other hand pulled Tony closer, like he was a pillow and burrowed his face to the nape of Tony’s neck, and just the feeling of the man’s breath against Tony’s back was enough to send every nerve on him over the edge. Fucking hell he wasn’t going to survive any of this no matter how good it felt.

It wasn’t until the door to the room slammed open, putting Steve on alert, which  only  sent Tony to the floor, that he was free, although he realized too late that this also put Steve on top of Tony and his current dilemma, the hard-on he was current sporting. Though judging by the piece of wood Steve was sporting, my god that thing was huge, well they were both living through a waking dream that was slowly turning into a nightmare. It was just a short  moment, but he wouldn’t trade it for anything, what he would give to be with Steve. 

“Get up you two we have a problem,” Natasha said breaking them both out of their current situation. Whatever it was, Tony was sure that he could blame Doctor Doom for it, considering the man’s track record with disturbing whatever it was that he had going with Steve.

“Is there a mission,” Steve asked without taking his eyes  off of Tony and honestly the whole commander thing was hot at the moment, but he wasn’t into having their first anything happen with someone watching them.

“Unless you call the fact that the two of you drunkenly got married last night by an Elvis impersonator and the internet is blowing up, a mission then yes there is one,” she answered, which only cause the two of them to separate and look at her like she had just thrown a bomb at them, which in all honestly it really did feel like a bomb.

The two of them scrambled off of the floor, Tony tripping over the sheets that had somehow tangled themselves around his legs, but Steve caught him, which was when Tony noticed the very real ring on Steve’s hand, and a matching ring on his own. This was not the way he had seen this happening, he just wanted a date, but apparently the universe had had enough of the pining and the miss ed moments and thought it would throw them both down the proverbial rabbit hole. Steve had noticed it too his eyes widening at the fact that it was real, honestly there were a lot of holes in Tony’s  memory, so he wasn’t sure if they had both consented to whatever had happened. He could only dread what would happen to his heart of Steve rejected him at th at moment.

“I’m just going to um... go to the... yeah,” he said before Steve could even comment, rushing off towards the bathroom grabbing his shirt on the way and closing the door behind him. He needed to think, he needed to figure out how much the world knew about a moment that he himself didn’t remember. 

That’s when he remembered the fact that Steve had crushed his phone, and his watch, which still had some capabilities was currently on the bedside table, and he didn’t want to go back to that. All he had wanted was to ask Steve out on a date, and now  all of his hopes can be crushed into nothingness just because they all got drunk. Where the hell had everyone else been when this had happened. He went over everything he could remember from the night before, which honestly wasn’t a lot because he had been drunk, but he had been drunk before and never married someone. He remembered a moment where Steve had told him that if he won something, what it was he didn’t remember, then Steve would propose marriage right then and there.

Steve proposed.... holy shit, Steve had been the one to say it, he had been the one to bring it up, so that meant that at some point Steve had thought about them as something. 

* * *

The moment Tony had been out of his sight Steve honestly though he was going to die, of course that was when Bucky and Sam burst into the room, Sam holding his phone and Bucky with the morning paper. Both of which, Steve knew, said something about whatever it was that him and Tony had done the night before. He could only remember bits and pieces, though the one glaring thing he remembered was the kiss they had shared and the fact that  someone was singing about f ools  r ush ing i n to something, that had been playing in the background. Had Elvis been there, he could swear he remembered someone in a white suit, they both signed  something, but he thought it was just a check for something or another. 

“Did you really marry Stark?” Bucky asked as he sat down on the couch that was in the room, honestly Steve had been sure that he was going to sleep on the couch so waking up the way he did was a surprise to him. “I mean Stevie, I was so sure that I’d be the best man at your  wedding, but I wasn’t even there.”

“What was in the drinks that Clint gave me yesterday?” he asked ignoring his childhood best friend, he just wanted to piece together some things.

“Other than the mead Thor gave him, who the hell knows,” Sam answered handing him a bottle of water. “So, you and Stark?”

“Seriously do you guys only call him Stark when he’s done something out of the ordinary?”

“Yes,” the both answered in unison, almost like they had planned this. 

“But also, because we knew that this moment would come eventually,” Sam added with Bucky nodding at the same time. “I mean Natasha hinted at  it years ago, after that whole Ultron fiasco, but when he left the Avengers, I was sure it was just a joke.”

_ I thought you and Tony were still gazing into each other's eyes. _

That had been a huge hint that he had missed, she really had known about this for a long time, so why had it taken him so long to piece it all together himself.

“Honestly I thought that after Siberia you wouldn’t have a chance at all,” Bucky added giving Steve a sad look. “I mean he was hurt more about the fact that you had kept the truth from him over me actually killing his parents.”

“Man, that bothered me too, I mean after we all came back especially,” Sam said and the two were having a conversation that Steve honestly didn’t want to be a part of  at the moment . All he really wanted to do was talk to Tony, but really talk to him, about all of this and about his own feelings towards the other man.

“Steve, we need to ask, is this what you really want,” Bucky asked him and he knew that they all knew the answer, but this was an answer he wanted to give Tony not one that he wanted to tell them. He nodded at his friends, because eventually this was where he had wanted to be with Tony. They had already gone through so much and came out better each time, he didn’t want to lose any more time than he already had with everything they’ve been through.

“Okay then,” Sam said before pulling Bucky away, “Go through that stuff,” he added before the two walked out of the room, leaving behind the tablet and the newspaper. He automatically knew that one was for him and the other was for Tony. He needed a moment to compose himself before he could knock on the bathroom door, maybe he needed to give Tony a little time as  well, but hadn’t that been the problem all along. They had given each other too much time, but it was only because they were always interrupted, but everyone else could take care of whatever came up and leave the two of them to deal with this once and for all.

* * *

The bathroom in this penthouse was huge, but right now it felt too small for Tony, as he paced back and forth, honestly why was it so small, maybe he could find a way to sneak out through the wall or something. He needed to get out, he didn’t want to know if Steve wanted him or not, he just wanted to live in ignorance for a little while longer. Then he remembered his one small memory, the fact that Steve had been the one to propose marriage, the fact that Steve had been the one to make this happen. That little flare of hope inside of him just grew out of nothing, he wanted this more than anything so why was it so hard to  actually get what he wanted.

“Tony,” Steve called out from the other side of the door and honestly Tony’s own heart could stop at that moment, he wasn’t sure just how much it could take after the last couple of weeks. “Tony, we need to talk.”

He didn’t want to talk, not unless that ended in the two of them doing someone horizontal on the  bed or making out in the bathroom or something. They were fucking married, that wasn’t where  this was supposed to start, it was supposed to start with a fucking date damn it. Why was this his life, he needed to have his life go from a crush to something else not this damn it.

“Tony please,” Steve said and honestly it broke everything in him not to open the door, but he needed a minute he needed to think, how was he a genius if he couldn’t calculate the risks of opening that door beyond a yes or no.

After a moment of him and his internal monologue, he heard something  thunk against the door, he figured that Steve was just sitting behind it but when he heard the sound again he knew that Steve was trying to get to him, probably thinking that something was wrong because while Tony had been pacing inside of the bathroom he hadn’t really said a word so to a person on the outside he could be passed out on the ground. He grabbed the door before the third push Steve could give it, because he didn’t want another broken thing in this penthouse, he was already going to have to build himself a new phone. Steve, already having a head start rushed into the room and fell into the bathtub because he hadn’t been able to slow down long enough to stop his momentum.

“Hi,” Steve said not really getting up from where he was, almost as if he resigned himself to his fate and decided to just live in the tub.

“Hi,” Tony said closing the door right back up, because he didn’t want anyone to interrupt what was about to happen. 

“So, we got married.”

“Yeah and it’s probably in every tabloid in the country by now, even though they all think that we’re already dating,” Tony added, because while yes, they were married, they weren’t dating.

“We should have been on a date by now, or at least  have  a few dates ,” Steve said and honestly Tony wasn’t certain about whether he could take another surprise. “I’ve been trying to ask you out for a while now Tony.”

“And why haven’t you?” he wanted this, he wanted these answers, hell he wanted to do it himself. Sitting on the rim of the bathtub, trying to stay as close as possible but with enough distance that he could walk away if he had to.

“Probably for the same reasons you didn’t, life just got in the way,” Steve said, but it was the moment he had taken Tony’s hand in his, the moment Steve started playing with the gold band on his finger, he knew that this was right, he knew that this is what he wanted. “Tony, I want you so much, but I was afraid, hell I even got advice from that multiverse version of you that showed up after that first fight with Doctor Doom.”

He knew the rest of the story, there had been moments, small ones here and there where they had been  close to something, but then the alarm rang out and they needed to assemble. So, why had this been different, why now, and the answer was that they finally had the time, and while it was unconventional, he honestly wouldn’t step back from what they had done the night before. Well maybe a little if only to go through it without being drunk. He knew that there were laws that prevented anyone who was intoxicated from getting married, but apparently the two of them were functional drunks if they were able to let it get that far.

“So, what now,” he said, it wasn’t a question, more of a statement.

There was a moment where he saw Steve hesitate, almost as if he were thinking of the next step, he was thinking like the leader of the Avengers and not a newly married man. Before Tony could move though, Steve grabbed his hand and pulled him down until he was being held up by Steve and not the side of the tub. There was a moment where he saw Steve lick his lips and honestly it shouldn’t have been as hot as it was but damn, it really was the hottest thing. It took a moment before their lips met in real time it could have just been seconds but in his own mind it finally felt like the world was slowing down for him. His mind wasn’t going a mile a minute, and all there was in that moment was Steve and him.

The kiss was soft, tentative, but it reminded him of the night before, of that moment standing at the altar, while Steve held his hand a megawatt smile on his face. He’d only remembered snippets of the night before, but it was the smaller moments that had happened that mattered. Those were the ones that he needed to remember, Steve holding his hand, the proposal, as strange as it had happened, and that first kiss. There wasn’t much after that that he couldn’t remember, but all that mattered was that he remembered the moment they got married. 

He’d done it once before with Pepper, but it was different in its own way, both moments were different. He loved Pepper, he really did and if it weren’t for the glaring differences in their lives, or the fact that Tony was Iron Man, they probably would have worked out. He would never regret their time together, just as she probably won’t either,  and she gave him the greatest gift in the world, his little girl. At the thought of Morgan, Tony pulled back, they needed to have that conversation, it was an important one.

“Steve, we need to talk about some things before we can go any further,” he said not wanting to step away from this moment just in case Steve couldn’t grasp the fact that he would be a  stepfather .

“Anything you want, I’ll give it to you,” Steve said without hesitation, never letting go of Tony, just hugging him to his chest. The angle was  weird, but they were in a freaking tub, god the moment Pepper hears about this she wasn’t going to let him down.

“It’s about Morgan.”

“She already gave me her blessing,” Steve said as he slowly ran his fingers through Tony’s hair, hell he almost missed what Steve had said. 

“Wait, what,” he said pulling away, even though it felt  really good . “What do you mean you have her blessing?”

“We talked, actually it was when the tabloids came out a few weeks ago, and she said that since I made you happy, she would be happy as well, plus she likes that I’m a better cook.”

“What...  wha ... excuse me but my burgers are infamous,” he said and honestly his own daughter betrayed him like that, how could she.

“She did say that,” Steve said smiling, “but she likes the thought of us together, so she gave me her blessing.”

“And you’re okay that I have a kid?”

“Tony, you and Morgan, hell add Pepper, Happy and Rhodey, you are a package deal.”

“You may want to add Peter to that list, and maybe Harley too.”

“Nope, those two can stay away from this, I worry  about what they’d do to New York if they ever got together, and honestly, I don’t want to die just yet, not when I finally got you.”

His heart was about to burst, after everything they had been through in the last fifteen years of their lives,  all of the ups and downs, they had finally reached this point. Like Steve, he didn’t want to lose it either, he wanted to hold onto his happiness for just  as long as he could. 

“We kind of started this whole thing backwards you know,” Tony told  him, which was the truth, they got married before they even had their first date. “How do we even move forward from that?”

“Well, I don’t want to get divorced, but I do think we’re owed a date or two.”

“More like a year’s worth.”

“Well we have been hanging out with one another for a while now, and with the exception of the last few weeks, I think we could have been together this entire time, we’re just bad at actually getting together.”

“You’re telling me,” Tony honestly couldn’t help but snuggle up to Steve in the bathtub. “Now does this mean we’re on our honeymoon, because I have a few ideas for what we can do.” The bathtub really wasn’t that uncomfortable once they were both in a position where they weren’t going to get a crick in the neck or something. 

“Well, I think that the Avengers can take care of themselves for a few days while we get better acquainted with our new lives,” Steve held him close, kissing the top of his head. This is what he wanted, just a single moment where he could speak with Steve without being interrupted without everyone meddling in his love life.

“I can get on board with that,” he said knowing that this what he had been trying to do, it only took a little longer than he really cared for.

* * *

They stayed in th e bathtub until they could hear Clint screaming, Steve honestly thought that he  needed a vacation more than anything, sometimes being the leader of the  A vengers was like trying to wrangle up a bunch of children. It says a lot that he prefers to cook with Morgan  an actual child over dealing with the team when there isn’t a mission and they have too much time on their hands . 

“We should go out there,” Tony said not actually bothering to move , honestly Steve hadn’t moved either, but mainly it was because he was happy right where he was, and that was with Tony. “Do you not want to go out there?”

“If we could run away without them knowing I would definitely suggest  that but considering I’m almost 100% certain that they’re all out there waiting for us… well it would be extremely difficult to get out without having them pin us down.”

“ Do you know what we should tell them, because I’m at a loss, I mean we did get married, or at least I have a very vague memory of it happening .”

“Oh, it happened, now you just have to tell me what our last names will be because I plan on wearing it like a badge of honor, well after our first date anyway,” which was what he had been planning all along, but when had anything in their lives gone the way they wanted.

“Well how about we hyphenate our names,” Tony said intertwining their hands together, pulling Steve’s left hand just to see the very real ring. “Also, I think we need better ring because these rings look cheap.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at that, “Considering it had been a very spur of the moment  thing, the rings weren’t always going to be the best, but new ones can be arranged.”

“Can I make them,  I’ve always wanted to try my hand at jewelry making,” the wink told him it was a joke but Steve wouldn’t  mind wearing a Tony Stark original if it meant that he would be carrying a part of Tony with him all of the time.

“I would like that,” he said answering this husband, he wanted nothing but honesty and from the wide-eyed look that Tony had given him Steve could tell that he had said the right words. “How about I design the rings and you can make them we’ll even buy solid gold if you want to and melt it down.”

“Our  rings have become a project for you haven’t they,” Tony laid his head on Steve’s shoulder and honestly it  was the most perfect thing to do, even while the Avengers, who are grown adults by the way, were arguing in the next room  like a bunch of children.

“Also, about the last name, how does Stark-Rogers sound to you?”

“ What you don’t like the sound of Rogers-Stark… wait no I take that back, that sounds horrendous,” Tony  answered, and  Steve couldn’t help but laugh. Their names should have been the last thing on their minds , they had eloped without a second thought, but it was easier to think like this over having to deal with their family on the other side of the door .

Unfortunately, their reprieve didn’t last long, because Natasha picked the lock to the bathroom and barged into the room. “Nat, we could have been in the middle of something,” Steve admonished his friend.

“No, you weren’t, I doubt your first time would be in a hotel in Vegas, but can you please deal with those idiots because I will murder them if they go on any longer.”

“What am I their parent, they’re old enough to know how to act like adults.”

“Okay dad,” she said mocking him before forcing her gaze their way, it was that look she got that told them that she could murder them in her sleep and would still get away with it.

Groaning, he slowly got out of the bathtub, lifting Tony up the moment he was out, giving the man a quick kiss before turning to go out and deal with his unruly team. Tony and Natasha followed  him, he could hear Natasha congratulating Tony behind him which only brought a smile to his face. Outside of the room they were met with chaos as the team was fighting over the food that had probably been delivered, but it seemed that they hadn’t ordered enough. Of course, they hadn’t, they didn’t account to the appetites of  all of the team.

“I’ll call room service,” Tony said turning back around and going back into the room, Steve was certain that he was trying to run away from whatever the hell was happening.

“Just get something for us too,” he said before turning his attention to the team.

It wasn’t the food they were fighting about, that had been a lie when Thor forced Steve to sit down on the nearby couch, all of the team sitting in front of him almost as if they were getting ready to lecture him about something. He wasn’t sure where any of this was going, but when Tony walked back and saw the scene before him, Steve didn’t know what was going to happen. That was until Rhodes came out of nowhere and dragged Tony towards the couch and sat him down next to Steve.

“What’s going on?” Steve asked, weirded out by their teammates and friends, who all had serious looks on their faces, as if Steve or Tony had done something wrong. Which he was sure that they hadn’t done anything wrong, well not really.

“We just want to know whether what’s written in the tabloids are true,” Rhodes said staring Steve down as if he had committed a cardinal sin by marrying Tony.

“Rhodey, honey bear, are you jealous,” Tony  said, and Steve just laughed, which only earned him a glare. Rhodes knew their history, he knew things from long before Steve had been defrosted, and there was also the fact that Steve never got permission from anyone other than Morgan so he was  pretty certain that he should have asked everyone first.

“Answer me Rogers,” Rhodes put the full force of his glare on Steve ignoring Tony completely.

“Yes, it’s true,” he answered hoping that this didn’t end in his death.

“Do you love Tony?” 

This was the moment he knew that whatever he said from this moment forward would either save him or end him. There was  n o in between anymore, what Rhodes was asking didn’t just involve Tony but every aspect of Tony’s life.

“More than anything,” he said knowing it was the truth, yes, they went about this whole thing in a very backwards motion, but after knowing the man for as long as he had, after the fights they’ve have both personal and as heroes, after losing, winning, and almost dying. He knew without a doubt that there wouldn’t be anyone else that mattered more to him than Tony had. Even with his past, with Bucky and Peggy, he couldn’t love anyone more than Tony.

“Good,” Rhodes said before the doors to one of the rooms opened and out came the rest of the Avengers, or at least the ones that hadn’t been on the mission with them, as well as Pepper and Morgan.

A giant congratulations banner came down from the ceiling, and Morgan ran up to them and threw herself at them. 

“It’s about damn time,” someone called out, he couldn’t tell who, but the response had been automatic.

“Language.”

* * *

According to sources in Las Vegas, Nevada, Avengers leaders, Captain America and Iron Man, also known as Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, got married at one of Vegas’s most famous chapels, according to the witnesses, the couple looked very much in love when they tied the knot. Rogers said in his vows, “I c ouldn’t have ask ed for a better partner in my life.” To which Stark answered, “ I  couldn’t have asked for a better partner in my heart.” The speculation over whether the two Avengers were together this whole time has been confirmed from this moment, and fans around the world have sent their congratulations to the couple.

From us here at E! News we hope that the couple are happy in their new lives, and that they’ll protect one another in the same way they protect the world, with their whole hearts.


	5. Tall Husband/Short Husband

The shirts had been Natasha’s idea, like the ones she had given him and Bucky, but for Tony who hated being called short, Steve knew he liked it now that he had a matching shirt with Steve. It was their  one-year anniversary, one year since they got married, and they were at the Malibu house after renewing their vows.  Their first honeymoon hadn’t gone off the way they had planned, because while the Avengers could deal with the threats that plagued the world, they weren’t trained enough to handle it without Steve or Tony there. Individual missions they were fine with, but the team missions they weren’t well prepared, so they had to cut their trip short after being on the plane for less than an hour.

So, it took a year of aggressive training from Steve, and enough device upgrades from Tony, before the couple had been allowed to even think of trying to go on their honeymoon at all. Although Steve had taken Tony on dates, some of which had been with Morgan, which Steve loved. One of which had been that trip to Coney Island, along with Pepper and her girlfriend, which surprised everyone, especially Peter who hadn’t known that his aunt was dating Pepper at all. Peter spent too much time with his friends, his girlfriend, and the Avengers, so he had missed a lot.

Steve got Tony a very large stuffed bunny, and a teddy bear for Morgan, he also broke the balls, which Tony paid for and he felt guilty, except the guy running the booth just wanted their autograph as payment. Tony still paid for what they broke, but Steve had made up for it with a kiss at the top of the Ferris Wheel. Which made the effort well worth it, and Morgan was happy with her giant bear, she reads to it when she spends the night at the Tower.

“I hate that it says short,” Tony said as they settled into the mansion. 

“No, you don’t,” Steve told him with a smile. The moment Natasha had given them the shirts Tony had thrown it on. He had also burned the ones that she had given Steve and Bucky eighteen months before, which only solidified the fact that Tony had been a little jealous of Steve’s relationship with his best friend. Tony had thought that they had been dating, that was until Bucky had made a face and went to go stand by his girlfriend.

“ _ He’s like a brother to me, gross man _ ,” Bucky had called out.

That had  actually been the end of that, though the shirts had already been burned, DUM-E had been ready with the fire extinguisher and the video had been something that FRIDAY had shown him after the incident.  He couldn’t help but laugh that Tony had been just a bit jealous over something like that, but he later learned that Natasha had had enough about their stupid pining and decided to get the ball rolling.

Now a year later, a year married, they were happy, and while they were on vacation as a couple, they had also brought Morgan and Peter with them. They were going to go to Disneyland while they were there and then Pepper was going to fly back with them so that Steve could have his husband for just a little while longer. It was also because Pepper herself wanted the weekend with May without having the kids around, Steve was pretty certain that one of them would propose, but Tony instead gave them access to the beach house in the Caribbean for as long as they wanted and they had taken him up on that offer.

“While the kids pick out their rooms, why don’t we get started on dinner,” Tony said pulling out the burgers and ribs that they had had delivered long before they had gotten there.

“Sure, as long as you let me actually cook, because while I trust you with burgers, I don’t trust you with the grill, not after you burned Clint’s eyebrows off.”

“Well he had it coming, plus the kids laughed at him for weeks until they started growing back,” it had been funny, and one of the few family gatherings they had had recently at the Barton Family Farm. It was hard for them, but Clint especially during those five years, but now they were all getting better, and with therapy they would be alright.

Which reminded Steve of a promise he had made, Tony never did get the chance to make their rings, there hadn’t been a lot of free time for either of them, but Steve had asked a friend for help on that. Designing rings for  both of them had become Steve’s little project and with  Shuri’s help he had gotten the material they needed for the rings. Though he had made another ring out of their original wedding bands, that ring had a piece of Tony’s original arc reactor shining at the center like a diamond, the ring itself had been made with a piece of Steve’s shield, sorry Sam but he had to shave some off.

“Hey Tony,” he said catching his husband’s attention as he  kneeled down onto the floor with the rings in his hand.  “I know we promised to do this together, but I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Are those the rings, Steve when did you have the time?”

“Well I had a little help on that front,” he smiled at Tony.

“Remind me to send  Shuri a present, maybe something from space, or a trip to space if she wants.”

“Well while I’m still kneeling here,” he took a deep breath. “I just want to be able to say that the last year has been one of the best of my life, one that wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our meddling friends, but I wouldn’t have changed it for the world, and I want you to have these rings as a symbol of the love that I have for you.”

“Is this my arc reactor?”

“Yes, it is, I had help from Pepper too.”

“Wow you really put a lot of work into this.”

“Only the best for my husband.”

“Thank you,” Tony said, which made Steve’s heart  grow even more with love, if there was one thing that he knew for certain that for a man like Tony Stark, giving him any kind of gift was impossible, unless it came from the heart. It’s a good thing that these rings came from both of their hearts.

* * *

“I like that story,” Morgan said from her bed, it was one of the few stories that her dad told her, mainly because she always asked him to tell her this story. “It’s better than the one you used to tell me.”

“Yeah well, you had said a no  no word back then, and honestly you were extorting juice pops from me just so you wouldn’t tell your mother that you repeated anything I had said.”

“Tony,” Steve admonished from the door, Peter was sitting on the floor listening to the story as well. This was her family, stitched together but she loved them all. She was only eight years old, maybe  she could ask for a sibling in the future, but that was something she wanted to wait just a little bit longer for.

“What it’s true, she’s a mini dictator I swear.”

“That’s enough out of you, it’s time for everyone to get to bed,” Steve said before pulling her dad  off of the floor. “Good night Morgan,” Steve gave her a kiss on her forehead, and then her father did as well. 

“Goodnight Dad, goodnight P a p a ,” she said before turning over and falling asleep.

“She called me P a p a ,” Steve said as she drifted off, it had been the first time she used the term, but Peter had told her that it was a different way to call someone dad and it fit.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed the story!!


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